December 8, 2023

‘A Longing for Home Food Booth’ at SAF 2023

Mayuri and Ravi: Mutton Pulao
As Mayuri and her papa reminisce about the rich mutton pulao prepared by their family cook for Sunday lunch, Mayuri remembers a related food ritual. In the lead up to the pulao, the cook would reserve the first taste of the fresh mutton, in the form of the broth the mutton had been cooked in, for her. As the pulao vividly rests in Mayuri’s memories, it is the taste of this fresh and flavourful mutton broth from her childhood that Mayuri longs for.
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Tarana Khan and Fauzia Khan: Parande
Tarana Hussain Khan, food historian and writer, speaks to her aunt, Fauzia Khan about pasande, a mutton gravy dish from Rampur, their hometown in Uttar Pradesh. Tarana asks Fauzia, who she calls Fauzia khala, to share Tarana’s grandmother’s original parande recipe, which only Fauzia remembers and makes true to the original.
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Shreshtha Chhabra and Shashi Chhabra: Panjiri
Shreshtha Chhabra and her paternal grandmother Shashi Chhabra discuss how to make panjiri, a warm and comforting winter dish made to soothe a sick throat. Made with rotis and ghee, Shashi swears by panjiri as medicine for an ailing person, the recipe for which she learned from her mother-in-law after she got married.
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Lamiya and Adil: Pappa nu Ghosh
Cousins Lamiya and Adil believe their collective love and affinity for cooking lies in their genes. This is true in many senses as they first developed a passion for food in their grandfather’s kitchen, watching him experiment with new recipes. As they discuss their grandfather’s signature roast meat dish, they revel over how his recipes and techniques stand the test of time, with the meat from the pappa nu ghosh as tender as their first memory of it.
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Ashish and Mamta: Aloo Dahi ki Sabzi
In this conversation between Ashish and his paternal aunt, Mamta, they discuss their shared favourite family recipe, aloo ki dahi ki sabzi. Boiled potatoes are gently simmered in a light yoghurt gravy to make this Rajasthani dish. To the utter confusion of the rest of the family, Ashish and Mamta love to eat the sabzi with white bread. Mamta, who would often feed Ashish when he was a child, instilled the love for this strange yet comforting sabzi-bread combination in him.
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Disha Pinge: Tival
When Disha speaks of tival, a sweet-and-sour kokum based drink, she describes it as though it was made for her. Although the drink isn’t seasonal, her memories of it are; her grandmother would prepare it for her every summer afternoon, to be had with lunch.
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Ankita: Dal Fara
Out of all of the food her mother makes, Ankita’s favourite of hers is dal fara, a bread-like dish stuffed with a paste made with a mix of dals. Her most distinct memory of the dish is disliking it, and refusing to eat it as a child. Now, a professional chef, she shares her recipe for it with us.
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Shreshtha Chhabra and Shashi Chhabra: Seb ki kheer
Shreshtha Chhabra and her paternal grandmother, Shashi Chhabra discuss how to make the seb kheer Shashi makes using apples. Its subtle sweetness and unique texture have made the sweet dish a family favourite, with members often demanding that Shashi make it for them. Shreshtha, who has never tasted this dish, often craves it from her family’s memory of it alone.
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Auroni and Aniruddha Mookerjee: Paya Soup
Auroni Mookerjee’s father, Aniruddha Mookerjee shares that his first food memories were of visiting a butcher with his father, where he learnt about different cuts of meats and parts of an animal. As they discuss their family’s recipe for paya soup, we realise how both of their childhood experiences of eating and cooking offals such as trotters, enables them to deeply understand meat as a source of care and nourishment.
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Sreetama Sen and Dipa Sen: Rasha
Sreetama Sen and her mother, Dipa Sen discuss Sreetama’s grandmother’s recipe for rasha, a spicy vegetable stew akin to shukto, made special with fried poppy seed balls. On Sundays, when rasha was made at home, Dipa didn’t feel the absence of meat and fish on the table. She passed this appreciation for the dish down to Sreetama, who first learnt to appreciate Bengali vegetarian fare through this dish.
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Tansha Vohra and Bhanu Roy: Atte ka Halwa
Bhanu Roy, a seasoned cook in Tansha Vohra's home in Bangalore, has mastered the family's culinary heritage over 22 years, guided by recipes from Tansha's grandmother. While Tansha seldom savours these traditional dishes, Bhanu's atte ka halwa instantly transports her back to the cherished flavours of her grandmother's kitchen.
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Chryselle D’Silva Dias and Pearl D’Silva Dias: Green Prawn Pulao
While Chryselle D’Silva Dias calls herself a reluctant cook, her sister Pearl has been an avid cooking enthusiast since their childhood. In school, Pearl diligently kept a recipe notebook filled with recipes she had collected, one of which was the recipe for green prawn pulao. Even though Chryselle hasn’t eaten this dish for multiple decades now, she still remembers how much she enjoyed eating her little sister’s preparation of it.
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Theystan Chukki: Chutagi
For Theystan Chukki, cooking is a skill learned through observation alone. She shares her recipe for chutagi, a brothy dish made with round wheat dumplings and meat, which she picked up from her parents. Growing up, Theystan’s father encouraged her to eat local dishes and experience flavours distinct to the region; it was important to him that Theystan appreciate her culinary heritage. Now, when she travels outside of Chumarthang, she misses the taste of Chutagi.
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Shreshtha Chhabra and Shashi Chhabra: Bikaneri Chai
Shreshtha Chhabra and her paternal grandmother, Shashi Chhabra discuss Shashi’s memories of the delicious chai sold near her home in Allahabad, where she grew up. While Shashi and her family drank this chai daily, they only later learnt about how its distinct taste, which drew all of them to it, came from the inclusion of poppy seeds in the tea blend. Over the years, Shashi has perfected her own version of this Bikaneri chai.
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Riya Behl, Nikita Behl, Charmaine Behl, and Marie Rosario: Coloured Cake
In Marie Rosario’s kitchen, the coloured cake is an evergreen staple. She, along with her daughter, Charmaine Behl, and her granddaughters, Riya and Nikita Behl, discusses her memories of baking and eating this cake on important days with all of her grandchildren. Both Riya and Nikita remember how they marvelled at the perfectly distinct patterns of colour in the warm baked cake, and how today, the cake tastes just as good, with the flavours just as welcoming as they have been for decades.
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Sumaiya Mustafa: Manja Vaada
Sumaiya Mustafa, who wrote about Kayalpatnam in Tamil Nadu for a piece on food memories for The Locavore, shares her recipe for manja vaada, a snack from her coastal hometown that connects her to her cousin living in Luxembourg.
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Anindita Ghose and Amrita Choudhary: Didu'r Payesh
Having neglected learning this recipe while she was growing up, Anindita began realising the value of this bit of family knowledge while living away from home. She wanted to perfect the dish to recreate for her friends’ birthdays, a popular Bengali ritual, and carefully picked up the recipe over several calls with her mother. Amrita, Anindita’s cousin, and she discuss how didu’r payesh can only be made with full fat milk from a dairy, gobindobhog rice, and good nolen gur.
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Shreshtha Chhabra and Shashi Chhabra : Churri
In this conversation between Shreshtha Chhabra and her paternal grandmother, Shashi Chhabra, Shashi shares her recipe for churri, a cherished winter snack, and her beloved culinary ritual of making it on Nag Panchami every year. She only learnt this recipe post her marriage, as a means to preserve a family tradition that has survived generations.
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Rigzin and Tenzin: Blood Sausages
Rigzin and Tenzin, from the Bodh community in Himachal Pradesh, share their recipe for blood sausages. Rigzin distinctly remembers being served this delicacy by his father when he was small. Tenzin too traces his first memories of blood sausages to his childhood; he learned how to cook the dish by watching his father prepare it. Today, they add new ingredients as flavouring to the dish; as people from the community leave the region and return, taste preferences and palates evolve.
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Mehvash Arslan and Shahina Kavarana: Khageena
Although a self-proclaimed bad cook, Mehvash has learnt to make one dish and do it well, Khageena. This spiced and flavourful egg dish was taught to her by her mother, Shahina Kavarana, who learnt it by watching her mother, who instinctively learnt it from hers – Khageena has been preserved in the family through generations of daughters. During the pandemic, Mehvash deeply craved the taste of Khageena, and prepared it for her friends for breakfast.
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Shreshtha Chhabra and Bhimsen Handa: Lahori Bakery
Shreshtha Chhabra, who lives in Bangalore, talks to her maternal grandfather, Bhimsen Handa who lives in Sonipat. Bhimsen grew up in pre-partition India and shares his memories of the taste of biscuits from a community bakery in Mughal Pura, Lahore which he frequented as a child. Their conversation reveals the strength of food as a medium to learn about our loved ones and their histories.
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‘A Longing for Home Food Booth’ is a part of The Locavore’s Culinary Arts curation at the Serendipity Arts Festival 2023. The recipes and stories in this installation come together in an immersive listening experience through people’s oral food memories.

Welcome to ‘A Longing for Home Food Booth,’ a mesmerising culinary journey at the Serendipity Arts Festival. Through the course of our lives, many of us find ourselves living far from loved ones, having to move to unfamiliar cities, and surrounded by people we don’t know. In times like these we often long for and wish to taste familiar flavours, those that remind us of home. We take great comfort in our families’ and communities’ treasured recipes; they enable us to feel connected to home through the food we eat.

 

‘A Longing for Home Food Booth’ captures this very sentiment. Stepping into the installation transports you to memories from around the country, of shared meals and cooking together.

For Harbajan Kaur, cooking and feeding, and the principles underlying these acts are realised in her cloud kitchen, ‘Bachpan Yaad Aajaye’. The name of her venture is a testimony to the role memories play in keeping culinary traditions alive. Photo courtesy of Harbhajan’s—Bachpan Yaad Aajaye.

Inside the booth, you will be able to listen to a diverse set of voices share their intimate relationship with food and family, and watch their stories come to life through Hariom Verma’s animations.

 

Over the last few months, members of The Locavore team have been sourcing stories and recipes from across the country. The process began with us reflecting on our own experiences of eating and cooking away from home; it became increasingly evident that defining ‘home’ and how we relate to it, was a project in itself.

Sreetama and Dipa Sen, with Sreetama’s grandmother, whose rasha recipe they both hold very close to their hearts. Her rasha, a vegetable stew dressed with fried poppy seed balls, encouraged Sreetama to explore vegetarian dishes in Bengali cuisine. Photo by Sreetama Sen.

As we collected these stories, we wanted to highlight the narratives that changed how we, as The Locavore, interact with food. Simultaneously, we wanted to be open and measured in which stories reach us, and how. We reached out, through social media, those that follow The Locavore, and asked them to send us their everyday relationships with food and family. We wrote to our writers, and asked them to share a little more of their personal stories with us. We connected with our family members and friends to learn about those closest to us. And we asked chefs and food experts to speak to us about this, to hear from those we rarely interact personally with. With each conversation, our lens to approaching food and our intimate lives, and the connection between the two, grew more nuanced.

 

As we listen in on the conversation between Shreshtha and her maternal grandfather, Bhimsen Handa, we learn about the sweetness of biscuits in bakeries in undivided India. Sumaiya Mustafa, who wrote about Kayalpatnam in Tamil Nadu for a piece on food memories for The Locavore, shares her recipe for manja vaada, a snack from her coastal hometown that connects her to her cousin living in Luxembourg. Tamalika De and her maternal aunt Rita Chodhury talk about their beloved dim shukti, a speciality from Chittagong, and how they’ve adapted this dish that means so much to them, to incorporate ingredients available to them in their current home cities of Mumbai and Kolkata.

 

We hope these stories, sent to you with love and longing from Lucknow, Hyderabad, erstwhile East Bengal, Lahore, and from Mumbai, Bangalore, Karwar, and so many more cities, towns, and villages, will compel you to engage with these foods and voices as a form of storytelling.

As you interact with this installation, we invite you to witness how different experiences and stories come together. And how this collective portrayal of our individual, seemingly mundane experiences contributes to an overarching, communal archive of living with food.

Join us in this celebration at the intersection of food, nostalgia, and stories—where the simple act of sharing recipes with your loved ones transforms into a participatory ode to our collective culinary heritage.

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