She cooks: Understanding Hunger-III

Lunch at a Native American home in Jemez Pueblo, May 2007. Interestingly, some of the folks in this picture had visited India

(This post is part of the series “Understanding Hunger”—you can find the older posts here and here.

Core of hunger is food. Cooking and food are related. This post attempts to re-establish the joy of cooking in our hearts.

Cooking is activism. It is taking back the power over what we eat and what constitutes food back to our hands, back from companies and factories and lobbyists who persuade us what “good” nutrition is, what to eat and when to eat, who have slowly monopolized the culture around food. Cooking is part of slow food movement. Pick food items yourself, cook, and feed yourself and others. Develop a relationship with what you cook, how you and your family are nourished through that process, and build your traditions.

After spending an important part of my life protesting any demands of cooking, I realized its importance and went on to embrace this aspect in my life. Along with my students, we prepared an easy-to-cook recipe booklet for students at University of New Mexico in 2007. In 2010, I began to offer cooking classes.

Being an activist, I peppered my classes with stories of women from whom I learnt various kinds of cooking. I do have many male friends who cook excellent food and I have enjoyed it. But I note the difference—when women with feminine tendencies cook and serve, there is joy in their eyes when you have eaten happily; when men cook, they cook with aplomb and often expect expert praise about the subtleties of their cooking. Of course there are mother-men who cook just to feed and it is always a delight eating at their homes. I find TV series like “Masterchef” very masculine in their tendencies. Competition over cooking? I would like to see competition over feeding!)

I begin this post remembering Sabari, the old woman in the popular mythology Ramayan, who is said to have fed a travel-tired Rama handpicked berries by first tasting it. 

Then I remember my mother. She is a crazy woman. She could never walk straight. There she goes sniffing this flower, checking out that leaf, plucking some strange berries. Her return booty from her walks used to be always interesting and as a child I often winced, wondering what dangerous concoction she would be preparing that day. I wrote this in 2009 remembering those days:

"I can still see my mom walking down the neighbourhood roads searching for some weird bitter berries that she claimed had medicinal properties. She would bring it back home, lay them on a muslin cloth to roast in whatever sun could trickle into our balcony in our apartment in the 13 million people-heavy Calcutta. A day later the berries would turn and emit the most foul odour. Once the nasal titillation ceased, these berries would appear on my plate as deep-fried, ugly-looking things that I had to eat with rice and yogurt. Other times they would appear as stew and I would search ways to escape the meal.

Aaah mother! Today I crave those berries! Can I retrace my steps back to 162/A/97 Lake Gardens to that weird peach dining table, to my small stainless steel plate, to that plate of food? "

And I remember that grandmother of my friend in high school. I do not remember my friend as much as I do her grandma who lived in North Kolkata. Bengali kitchens when I was growing up looked very different from the modern contraptions. There are no raised platforms, much of cooking done on coal stoves, vessels made of aluminum, a unique knife called Boti (find info on it here), a stone grinding tool sil batta and spices that lie around. I used to love sitting with my friend’s grandma as she cooked, now covering the potatoes with turmeric, now grinding fresh herb and spice paste, now smoking the mustard oil as she would lovingly ask if I wanted anything special to eat that day. I ate in her kitchen at times, with her watching me, urging me to eat some more. I do love Bengali food.

And I remember my close friend in Pune, a married homemaker who enjoyed and excelled in cooking. She was a very beautiful tall woman with hair that reached her knees. She was also a very intelligent woman with whom I enjoyed many a deep conversation. It is a different thing that everytime her husband’s car was sighted when we walked around the society garden, she had to leave to make coffee for him. But I learnt how to make good comforting dal and paneer mutter masala from her—the way she pulled together ingredients, the sequence of adding spices, the smart ways in which you can decrease cooking time, and how to serve the dish. I do love Paneer.

And I remember my best friend in New Mexico and how I learnt how to make baked potato from her. Baked potato is a very simple and basic dish. I fell in love with it after I ate it once with sour cream. I, however, did not understand baking—it was not part of my cultural psyche. You may say, ok, so you learnt how to bake a potato—how does that merit a mention here? You see it is not just about baking—it is about women across cultures coming together, it is about women caring for each other, it is about women teaching each other. I always remember baked potato with sour cream as my New Mexican comfort food.

And I remember my Sindhi sister-in-law who is the only cook to painstakingly design food around my Ayurvedic food restrictions. “Didi, I was thinking of making this—will you like it?”  A woman who worked hard at work and at home and yet in some magical way always found time to cook me the most thoughtful dishes—embarrassing me at times, as I waited in lazy delight, for her concoctions to appear. The joy of having family. Did I tell you that I love Saibhaji?

And I finally remember and dedicate this post to my five-year-old niece. One evening, her friends and she gathered around my sister-in-law clamouring for jelly candies. The trend that evening was for one particular flavour of jelly which was in short demand and all the kids (some 8 of them) were insisting on the same flavour. At long last, after much haggling, my niece got her serve. She looked at the piece in her hand, turned around and looked at me and said—Oh, I should give this to Athai (aunt)! So saying she rushed and unhesitatingly offered me that precious jelly piece.

I somehow love jelly these days.