More than ever before, I’ve now realized what food means to me. The lock-down has taught me, among other things, that I can’t take my food for granted. Most of us, including me, have grown up with plenty of options for food. I for one was blessed with grandmothers who cooked lots of different mouth-watering, heavenly dishes. There was no end to the variety. Dishes got repeated once only in 10-15 days. Our ancestors had migrated from Western to Southern India a long time ago, no-one in our family knows when. So we were all born in Karnataka state of India, but spoke Marathi (Maharashtra state’s local language) at home! Our family’s cooking saw a mix of traditional Maharashtrian and South-Indian foods. To add to the diversity, my dad was posted in Gujarat, when I was a kid. And my Mom, another superb cook, picked up Gujarati recipes as well.
I’ve listed many Indian dishes in the following lines and tried to explain what they are in an ‘English’ way. If you find this funny, I’m glad I made you smile. But if you find it pretentious, well, God save you ;-). Also, please don’t curse me, if the descriptions remind you of those fancy fine-dining restaurants with exotic descriptions of Indian dishes (My heart reaches out to all of you locked inside your homes, aching to ‘dine-out’ or at least order in)
At home, for breakfast, we would eat idli (steamed rice and lentil cakes), dosa, (pan-fried flat pan-cakes, made of rice and lentil), sambhar (lentil soup), chutney (coconut paste accompanying idli and dosa), ‘puttu’, (steamed and sweetened rice powder and grated coconut) ‘rice noodles’, poori-saagu (Deep-fried wheat bread, with vegetable gravy), Upma (semolina and veggie mix), chapatti (wheat flat-bread) with gravies and curries of different styles. Maharashtrian specials like ‘amti’ (a lentil soup accompanied with rice), ‘junka’ (curry made from besan/gram flour), ‘varan’ (another type of lentil soup) and ‘kadan’ (tomato puree based gravy accompanied with rice) featured as regulars for lunch. Karnataka’s special dishes like ‘bisi bele bath’ (rice, lentils and veggies cooked in a one-pot style) and ‘puliyogere’ (tamarind flavored rice), different varieties of rice were among the lunch-time favorites at home. As we grew up, my mom experimented with ‘fast’ food. Her oven dished out home-made pizzas, there was mind-blowing chaat (savory snack), sprinkled with home-made pudina/mint and tamarind-jaggery chutneys! This was at a time when the internet hadn’t taken an important spot in our living rooms. No You-tube videos to turn to. No Instagram food-gurus either. The recipes were sourced from women’s magazines.
Every season had its hot and happening ‘star-dishes’. Summers meant mangoes. From ‘aam panna’ (sweet and sour mango juice) to mango flavored rice and my personal favorite: aam-ras (mango pulp) with poori, we had many a ‘mangoish’ summer. Summer also meant that we made our own sun-dried savory snack. Our summer vacation saw us climbing onto our roofs to spread out plastic sheets on which we would neatly pour small portions of a thick liquid made from sago (sabudana) or rice. This would be sun-dried in the harsh tropical Indian summer for many hours. The end-products, produced in bulk, looked like transparent hard chips. These would be stored in steel containers and used throughout the year. They would be ready to eat when deep fried in oil. We called it ‘sandige’ or ‘kanchra’.
Our family loved food to the extent that they sometimes obsessed over it. Sundays and festivals meant that my mom spent three quarters of her day in the kitchen, brewing, mixing, whipping up and sprinkling some magic. There were more number of dishes on these days. Our birthdays and ‘home-parties’ for friends meant more kitchen-time for mom. But she loved cooking, still does. The ‘modak’/ ‘kanole’ (A steamed sweet dish with rice flour on the outside and a coconut-jaggery filling, shaped like a dumpling) as we call it, for a festival called Ganesh Chaturthi; the ‘puran-poli’ or ‘holige’ (a sweet flat bread stuffed with sweetened dal/lentil stuffing) and ‘butter-murruku’ (that savory snack that is crisp made from gram flour /besan and literally melts in your mouth) for Diwali, the festival of lights.
I was a fussy kid in terms of food. I took this food-filled childhood for granted till I landed up in a hostel for my under-graduation! The hostel food brought me right on track and I started to feel grateful for food I got at home. Until the time I finished my post-graduation, I hadn’t cooked full-time. Mumbai saw me bloom from a 2/10 cook to a 7ish/10 cook. After the initial resistance to cook DAILY, I realized cooking has a meditative quality to it (especially when you aren’t in a hurry). With time, I started enjoying cooking and experimenting along the way. Thank God for that, otherwise this lock-down would’ve been a tough time. No restaurants, take-away or cook services at our disposal, the number of ‘home-made’ foods have sky-rocketed on Instagram ;-).
We, as a family, loved travelling, even 25 years ago, when travelling wasn’t as ‘in’ as it is today. Well, maybe not today-today, coz’ we are facing something we weren’t mentally prepared for! (Let’s not say the ‘C’ word). Our travels ranged from one-day trips, to long-weekends to 25-day tours within India. Wherever we went, we tried the local cuisine; Dal-bhatti-churma in Rajasthan, Momos in Himachal and so on. If it was a short trip/picnic, the ladies of the house packed enormous quantities of food and we ate in scenic picnic spots. So, eating out has been a part of our family ‘things-we-do-together’ ethic for as far back, as I can remember. We would go to these ‘Sagar and darshini-chain’ of restaurants, pretty well-known to local Bengaluru folks. My first ever ‘Pizza Hut’ experience with family was in Class six, if I remember correctly. Once or twice a year we would go to some ‘fancy’ restaurant. The local chaat addas, ‘softie-ice-cream’ place and MTR (Mavalli tiffin room) were frequent food-havens. My undergraduate years in Mysore (5.5 years! Coz’ it was MBBS!), saw me explore a ton (literally hundred!) restaurants, food-spots with my dear friends. Following years at Vellore, Bengaluru and then Mumbai were studded with special eat-out places. In Vellore, my favorite was the appam-vegetable stew in Vellore Kitchen. Bengaluru, I loved this place called ‘Go-Native’ that I stumbled upon in Jayanagar area. Bengaluru’s corner house ice-cream is to die for (My mouth’s already started watering!). In Mumbai, the brownies in Theobroma café stole my heart. And each of these restaurants, not only bring back memories of taste-bud tingling dishes, they bring back memories of friends, family, conversations, birthdays, anniversaries, fare-wells and what not.
Well, I can only thank whatever /whoever there is to thank (God/Destiny/fate???) for all these privileges I’ve had all my life. If there’s one thing the lock-down has reinforced in my life; its gratitude for the food on my plate!