In India’s ever evolving culinary scene, it is heartening to see how the diners are now more open to various regional Indian and international cuisines. Indo-Chinese, Italian and Mughlai food continues to have its fanbase, but there is an overall shift in the way we consume food and the experiences that we invest our time and money in. In fact we are now slowly moving away from the umbrella terms of regions and diving deeper into sub-regions and communities with the growing popularity of home-chefs.
Last weekend on a balmy spring weekend, Mumbai resident Dr Kasturi Sonalkar, and Delhi resident and chef Kartik Sinha joined hands to bring the cuisine of the Chandraseniya Kayastha Prabhu (CKP) community to the food lovers of Delhi at Indica in Ghitorni — a privately run space which hosts gastronomic experiences.
The CKPs, based largely across Gujarat and Maharashtra, hailed from the Chenab river valley in Kashmir and north India. They later settled along the Konkan coast, therefore carrying with them influences of Maharashtrian cuisine through ingredients like coconut, fish, kokum and more.
The vast menu featured popular items like sol kadhi, ambat varan soup (sweet and sour dal) and hirva kombdicha rassa (chicken in green broth) served along with a unique thalipeeth focaccia—bringing in Sonalkar’s expertise in baking sourdough breads. There was also a thali, which is one of the best ways to showcase the nuances of an Indian cuisine and something very inherently Indian too, so it never feels out of place.
It featured items like masoor dal salad, kothimbir vadi, naralachya dudhaatla mutton (tender lamb cooked in fresh coconut milk), hirva bombil kalvan (Bombay duck cooked in thick greens sauce) or the bharla vanga (stuffed aubergines in a special CKP masala) for the vegetarians. All of the above was served with saffron and caramalised onion rice and koshimbir (salad).
I quizzed Sonalkar on the nuances of the CKP cuisine and she mentions that along with being influenced by Maharashtrian food, CKP cuisine still maintains its unique identity and distinctive form from other sub ethnic groups of the state. A few ingredients which are common in the cuisine are kadve vaal/ birdha (bitter beans), sodey (dried prawns) and sukat (dried shrimps). “CKP community love their sukat so much that they can add it to anything edible like poha, cutlets, rice, rotis to even upma and some vegetable preparations”, she quips.
So how did this pop-up where traditional food’s confluence with modern techniques in a meal split into multiple courses, come about? “Taking CKP cuisine outside of Maharashtra has always been a dream that I have nurtured and I was overwhelmed with the response that people of Delhi have given to my community’s food. We were full house on both days of the pop-up,” Sonalkar says. Along with Chef Kartik Sinha, a resident of East Delhi, she had earlier hosted this pop-up in Mumbai at her home.
Abhishek Singh, a chartered accountant working for a multinational company in Gurugram was one of the guests at the pop-up. “We absolutely loved the dinner right from pre-thali to desserts. Our thali included mutton and stuffed brinjal. Both tasted extremely good, a taste we don’t get to experience in the north. The ninaav cookies were the dessert and were an icing on the cake,” he shares.
Initiatives such as these are taking multi-cultural culinary experiences to new heights where it’s not just about food but about creating social experiences. They are leading to active sharing of ideas and a future of crafting new sub-cuisines.