Secrets from a Grandmother’s Kitchen
In all my dreaming as a child, desperate to leave home for the big outdoors, I didn’t really envision myself as the type to miss Indian food. After all, even if I did, it wasn’t like there was a dearth of opportunity to indulge in fairly authentic Indian cuisine when I’d moved to London. However, here I am, writing this at my grandmother’s kitchen table, so much the wiser. It’s the small things you didn’t know you missed until you arrive at your grandmother’s doorstep and the familiar whiffs of nostalgia bonded flavour come back to you. And so one of the promises I made myself, was to learn at the feet of the masters (maternal and paternal grandmothers) how to recreate some of the magic they made in their modest kitchens.
Recreating the magic of the instinctive measurements of love.
— With love, from a kitchen in South India
The Lazy Ballerina Approach…
The one thing that never clicked with me and Indian cooking is the level of effort and complexity that appeared to be at the forefront of every dish that came out of the home kitchen. It was never as easy as throwing a few random things into a pot and letting it cook for 10 mins. In competing with how easy it is to cooking store bought ramen or a sunny side up – some of my favourite dishes growing up, lost that fight. In talking to my grandmothers, I am going to try and understand my favourite meals a little better to demystify what goes on behind that curtain. I am finding not everything is as hard as I thought it was and even the slightly more complex combinations of spices have room to be meal prepped so I can sneak the secrets of my grandmothers’ unwritten grimoire of delicacies into my little kitchen.
The Big Smokey Apple 