I love my kitchen. Not because it’s fancy or grand in any way, but because it’s comfortable and familiar by way of being unchanged and it just works. The counter top is Jaisalmer (stone), at just the right height for the tiny women in my family. It doesn’t scratch so you don’t have to be precious with it and it cleans down easily. The spice box is the same stainless steel box and I’m pretty sure it precedes me. I’m pretty sure it’ll outlive me too. It house 7 little dabbis (tiny containers) and one spoon that dispenses the right amount of spice, but is small enough so the box shuts. The oil sits in another dolchu with a screw on lid and a small karchi (ladle) inside because a spoon would be highly inconvenient. The patla to make rotlis as well as the pestle and mortar are both made from a beautiful white marble. The steamer and the pair of tongs look prehistoric, but have no better substitute. At some point I thought all of these plain, possibly even highly unattractive, but as I started to use them I realised that they were all beautiful, not in their appearance as much as being purposeful and efficient. Not just that, somewhere they seemed to embody the same humility that I so admired in my family. Eames’ words about the lota come to mind and one really begins to appreciate the relationship that form and function can take on. Somewhere it strikes me that like this project that I’m attempting, my kitchen is a combination of food and design too - both things that I love deeply. Or maybe it just reminds me of my mom and my grandmother and that’s enough to adore it.
I am part Parsi and part Kutchi and though the two cultures can be vastly different, it is safe to say that both sides of my family love food and cooking it. It has made me realise that even though what we may consume may be vastly different, the way in which we experience food has huge overlaps. Food is a funny thing, in that it can give you a sense of identity, but at the same time make you feel like you belong to something much, much larger.
When I was a kid, I thought food was about eating. I took home cooking for granted, much like we take salt for granted and unfortunately, it wasn’t until after my grandmother passed away that I started to realise that food wasn’t all about consuming. I wasn’t religious or tradition bound in any way and it started to dawn on me that my reference point for tradition, where we came from and who we were, came from food. Festivals and holidays were celebrated through food and after her, Parsi New Year wasn’t New Year-y enough and Sundays weren’t really Sundays.
It pained me that with my dear grandmother, so many recipes that had perhaps been passed down meticulously, had vanished too. There were so many things I wanted to ask her - where she learned a particular recipe, if the colonial town she lived in has any bearing on her cooking, what the Gujarati influence in what we ate was... But more than anything I wanted to be able to recreate familiar aromas and tastes that have become doorways to the most warm and joyous memories that I have with my little family.
I share my mum’s enthusiasm for cooking I think and fortunately my mum maintained a small recipe book. Every time she liked something (anywhere), she asked for the recipe and scribbled it down on a tiny scrap of paper. She proceeded to fold it down till it was small enough to slide into her wedding ring. She then came home and put it down in this lovely red, cloth-bound book. It is why I’ve started this little project called Edible Heirlooms. It’s my way of documenting food that I know and love and that has become synonymous with ‘us’. And of course, because it combines food, lettering and writing.
This passion project is going to be a little journey in documenting recipes from my childhood or even family favourites by lettering and illustrating them. Hopefully I’ll even be in the kitchen some more to able to recreate some familiar tastes and smells.
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