When stuffy noses and sore throats make eating feel like a chore and exhaustion makes it impossible to get up and cook, most of us have our comfort foods, whether its a hot bowl of tomato soup, pongal, dal-rice or thukpa, available at the tap of a food delivery app. But for Chef Avani Sharma, who found herself away from home, sick and craving her childhood favourites, no respite was in sight. “I could not find any of the cuisine I grew up eating. With 25,000 people from the Karada Brahmin community spread across the Karnataka-Kasargod region, none has opened a restaurant with its dishes on a menu,” she says. This, combined with memories of making and eating fresh farm-to-table food in Kasargod, with her extended family of 60 people during the pandemic a few years prior, led Sharma to start her digital project ‘Karada Spicebox’, in an attempt to introduce more people to this unique cuisine. Earlier this year, she appeared on MasterChef India too, making it to the top seven.
Karada cuisine is influenced by the migratory history of the community, which traces its origins to Karad in Maharashtra. At the core are three taste profiles: tangy, sweet and spicy. “The key part is tempering. People assume that the food will be mild, but we use a lot of onion and garlic too. You see the Kerala influence in coconut-forward dishes we have, we also cook in coconut oil.” The use of earthen pots too, is essential, shares Sharma, “Pot cooking takes a lot of patience but is crucial to get the flavour right for many dishes. Slow cooking enhances the flavours and because mud pots tend to absorb salt, it balances out the flavours.”
With Karada Spicebox, Sharma has been filming recipe videos as well as experimenting with creating fusions, not being puritanical about preserving an ‘original’ recipe, but celebrating how dishes evolve with the tastes of the people one is cooking for. On MasterChef India, where she teamed up with her father, this love for fusions and the influence of her background as an art teacher, food stylist and alumna of the Karnataka Chitrakala Parishath, came together. Specifically, her creation in the shape of the traditional aliguli mane game and uttappams with intricate flower patterns, have drawn eyeballs on clips shared across social media. She says, “I was doing art direction and food styling so I played to my strengths. It’s just my artistic instinct – I know what colour contrasts go well with each other, so once I knew the colour of the dish, I knew what to use with it.” Sharma got valuable mentorship out of the show, with Chef Ranveer Brar encouraging her to write a book, now a work in progress. Recently, she’s also begun doing weekend pop ups at venues across the city. “I’ve been hosting the events twice a month, depending on venue availability. The fun part is that a lot of my sisters, cousins and closest friends who have learned about the cuisine are my sous chefs!” she concludes, smiling.
For those whose interest has been piqued enough to try making some Karada recipes at home, Sharma recommends three: sollamiri bendi, pindi paisu and ubbale salla undalika. She says, “Solanmeerya bendi is a Turkish berry curry which goes well with dosae, rice and chappatis with a spoonful of ghee, pindi paysu is a slow-cooked temple sweet made with rice. Finally, sallan undalika are steamed rice balls made of fermented jackfruit.”