Celebrating Passion for Food
Diwali mornings, every year similar scenes would be played out in our one room kitchen home. Mom would cajole me, threaten me and finally forcefully drag me out of bed. I would be required to find my way to bathroom and get ready before Mom lights up the house with clay diyas. I would trudge across laboriously taking a slight detour and make my way to kitchen instead. I would find it on the corner of a table kept in a large vessel, tightly covered.
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I am an eternal optimist, a person who would look for silver linings in every problem at hand. I stick to this philosophy for most events in my life, however I must admit, there are some events which I rue as a lost opportunity. I regret to have missed the gastronomic experience of trying out the Nawabi (royalty) recipe of Shahi Tukda during my trip to Lucknow last year. This feeling is more so justified when you know that the recipe originated from that city.
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The festival of Ganeshotsav is celebrated with great enthusiasm and excitement in India and more particularly in Maharashtra. This is a 10 day festival that starts with Ganesh Chaturthi. In Sanskrit, Chaturthi refers to fourth day and this festival is specifically celebrated during fourth day of the waxing moon in Bhadrapada as per Hindu calendar which comes around August-September.
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Indian mythology is replete with stories, some inspiring, some motivating and some that just tell you a tale of bravery, honesty, patience, dedication, intelligence and numerous other virtues. It is hard to tell whether these stories are based on element of truth or they are just figment of someone’s imagination but they have existed for years and years and would continue to do so because they help us learn these core values and improve as a human race.
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He would come pretty early in morning, cycling laboriously, with his paraphernalia that would add to the weight on his bicycle. He carried a big kadhai (pan), no not just big, a gigantic one, a large iron ladle, a fuel stove and enough fuel to last him the day. He would start with simmering the milk in that pan. I would mostly be in my slumber and would wake up to the pleasant aroma of milk, the milk that would had simmered for some time and filled up the streets with the aroma emanating from the pan.
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We all have grown up, listening to stories. There would be that one storyteller in the family, who would enthrall you with stories every night. I remember my Badi Maa (Father’s elder brother’s wife) was an avid story teller. We kids would play throughout the evening and when it would get darker, some elder would drag us back to home. At home, we would get restless and urge Badi Maa to finish off her chores, so she could spend more with us. More time would mean more stories.
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Phirni or Firni is one of the most famous dessert recipes globally. It is essentially a rice pudding that is made world over in different forms and has several variations. Let’s talk about rice first. Rice has been the staple food for many cultures all over the world. How the word ‘Rice’ has originated and evolved over centuries travelling from one country to other is a fascinating tale.
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I was born in Mumbai and grew up in the city. I ended up romanticizing the city for anything and everything that it had to offer me. My parents however would often miss their rural roots. They would narrate me and my sister several funny anecdotes of the village where they were born, they grew up, where they shared laughs and grief with their cousins and uncles and aunts, and which they left with heavy heart for the city of Mumbai in search of better opportunities. I still remember, though not as clearly, but my memory still is fresh in parts, my first trip through the dusty bylanes on an open jeep leading to my ancestral home in a small village in Uttar Pradesh.
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This was on my cards; the recipe had waited long enough, as an entry in my recipe diary and it was about time I made this dessert.If you are wondering, how it tastes like, I would use a term to describe it, that I heard in the movie “Willy Wonka and the chocolate factory”, “its scrumdiddlyumptious”. I can’t get over the taste of this ice-cream. One of my dear friends “Chaya Ratnaparkhi” had shared this recipe with me some time ago. I had discussed this recipe with Pranay and how we should be preparing this ice-cream sooner than later. Finally, last Sunday we decided to make it.
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We should be thankful to Chinese. During Tang Dynasty in China, world witnessed an advent of a wonderful dessert recipe that we now know as “Ice-Cream”. Since then ice-cream has evolved for better over the period of centuries.
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