Recipes for Life by Sudha Menon; An Excerpt

Recipes for Life by Sudha Menon attempts to recreate memories and the magic of the food we grew up with and cherish. An excerpt where artist Atul Dodiya shares his memories:

Growing up in Ghatkopar, a suburb in Mumbai, where we lived in a chawl in great harmony with several Maharashtrian families, Ba (my mother) had adopted the practice of fasting in the month of Shravan. She asked the rest of the family to fast too, on Mondays of the month. The fast involved eating only one meal, usually at night, and faral (fasting snacks) during the day. I remember waiting eagerly for Shravan Mondays because Ba would prepare delicious upvas (fasting) snacks for lunch. I adored her sukhi potato bhajis, fried sakkariyas (sweet potato), rajgira (amaranth) puris, fried peanuts garnished with roasted jeera powder, all washed down with fresh dahi. I could eat great quantities of these snacks to Ba’s endless amusement. Ours was a middle-class household and Ba was a simple woman from Kathiawad, Gujarat, who cooked a simple fare of rustic Kathiawadi food—dal, chawal, rotli, shaak—for her husband and seven children. Since I was the first son born to her after four daughters, my siblings always teased her that the household had to eat whatever her pampered son wanted to eat.

Unlike the rest of Gujarat where food is sweet, Kathiawadi food is spicy with lots of chillies, onion and garlic in it.

Ba, a keen learner, always ready to experiment, eventually learnt how to balance the spice in her preparations, taking away the raw, rustic side to it. Ba was from a Rajput family and had in her repertoire of recipes a number of non-vegetarian dishes, but strangely enough, I have no memory of her eating nonvegetarian food at home. My parents gave up non-vegetarian food at some point in my childhood and we grew up on a largely vegetarian fare. While lunch at home was always the typical rotli, dal and shaak made Kathiawadi style from vegetables such as bitter gourd, cabbage and cauliflower, dinner was when the entire family sat down to have a meal of thick bajra bhakris with dollops of ghee and a gravy-based vegetable because the bhakris were too dry to be eaten on their own. Dinner also had Ba’s delectable moong dal khichdi with lots of ghee, a taste that still lingers in my memory, reminding me of her. Ba’s cabbage and potato shaak was one of my favourites, as was a karela dish with roasted masalas and onions, which was so delicious that we kids would actually look forward to her cooking it. She also made an outstanding drumstick dish with a thick gravy of besan, and I remember dipping my rotlis into the gravy, soaking them up and popping them into my mouth, steaming hot. She also prepared a variety of dals— chana, moong and urad—all of them spicy and yet comforting. On the side, with every meal, would be dry chilli pickle made from either red or green chillies. I will never forget Saturday afternoons when I would come home from school by lunchtime, while my sisters would have classes till evening. Ba would wait for me so that she could serve me hot rotlis with a shaak she knew I liked. We would eat together and chat endlessly about school, film and music, both of which she loved. Ba had a way with snacks, but I was particularly fond of her bhajiyas—made with potatoes, chillies and even sweet bananas. I could eat any number. In summers, Ba would get busy making pickles. We Gujaratis have a variety of pickles, but she would make not just the usual mango and lemon pickles but also some very traditional ones that women in her hometown would make. Thus, our kitchen shelf would have jars of daalla, garmar (coleus root) and gunda (bird lime or fragrant manjack) pickles, things our modern households neither know, nor bother to make. Sometimes, when I visit my sister in Saurashtra, I get to taste these pickles. I especially remember Ba’s gunda pickle. She and my sisters would dry the gundas in the sun for days before mixing them with mangoes, turmeric and spices. When I close my eyes, I can still picture her making the pickle and feel its unique taste in my mouth. She loved festivals and celebrated them enthusiastically with the other families in our wadi (community). She would get really busy during Diwali when she would make pooris, ghogra, chakri and sankarpala, among other things. The festival of Sankranti in January particularly stands out in my memory because she would make delicious til and mamra (puffed rice) chikkis and til ladoos, which were distributed in the wadi. All the kids would come to our house for the ladoos because they knew she would have put 10 paise or 25 paise coins inside the ladoos as a surprise with which they could treat themselves to goodies. I still recall how excited my friends would be to find exactly how much money was hidden in their ladoos.

Excerpted with permission from Recipes for Life: Well-Known Personalities Reveal Stories, Memories and Age-old Family Recipes by Sudha Menon published by Penguin India.

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