As I write my weekly column for this week, I’m sitting under unbelievably gorgeous cerulean blue skies—up in the hamlet of Jilling, in the Kumaon range. Birds chirp loudly around me, and butterflies with varying exotic patterns on their wings are prancing around the mountain daisies—swaying to the cool breeze. Sitting here, it is hard to imagine that down in the plains, the early summer temperature has soared beyond 40 degrees Celsius.
The serene stupor and epiphanies are broken by the whistle of the pressure cooker in the distance. Upon this, I ask Hem ji, the caretaker and chef of the homestay I am at, about what is being cooked. “Chachiya bana rahe hain aaj,” he tells me in his quintessential shy demeanour.
The humble ‘chachiya’ is a one-pot dish native to Kumaoni kitchens, where boiled rice is cooked with buttermilk, turmeric and some pisyun loon (flavoured pahadi salt), during the summer months. The dish isn’t the fanciest, but is what you would quintessentially define as ‘comfort food’. Cooked in a risotto-like consistency with creaminess lent by the buttermilk, it is a prized recipe unfortunately being lost to time. Here at Nanda Stone, Hem ji, under the guidance of Ashish Verma—the brains behind Himalayan Bounty—is trying to document and revive the food of this region, while introducing it to the guests who come to stay here.
There is a cascading effect to this. For instance, I loved the dish enough to want to make it a part of my culinary repertoire. It is true that if you are open to it, some of the best experiences you will have in life will come from the most unexpected of places. The same is true for food—just like what I described above.
Amusingly, this philosophy is also what connects this homely pahadi kitchen to one of the best restaurants in India. Last week, Chef Varun Totlani and his team at Masque, a restaurant in Mumbai, were over at The Westin in Gurugram for a two-day pop-up. Masque has been ranked as the best restaurant in India on the Asia’s 50 Best restaurants list for two consecutive years now, as part of global hospitality guide 50 Best’s latest rankings. The restaurant personifies modern Indian cuisine, which glorifies and puts on a global stage India’s culinary prowess—through diverse techniques and a vast array local ingredients from all over the country in a contemporary format.
Their approach is inspired from numerous regions and their very niche, local produces, which was very evident in the menu that the team put together for the pop-up. One of the dishes served to us was a bite-sized tart that drew its inspiration from the Maharashtrian puran poli, aamti, and green peas bhaji. While the dish seemed like a dainty piece of art, the flavours took me back to my childhood years of growing up in Mumbai—and visiting homes of Maharashtrian friends during Ganesh Chaturthi.
We would be served the naivedya offered as prasad—featuring puranpoli, aamti and vatana bhaji being among its key elements. For long, the food of India, represented around the world by some of our greatest chefs, has echoed soulfulness in every bite. Today, the modern Indian culinary playbook is out to heighten this even further, for while the soul of the food remains intact, what has evolved are the ideas.
It is in this philosophy to conserve, document and present to the world the various micro-cuisines of India, that a self-taught home-chef like Hem and a Culinary Institute of America graduate Totlani are on the same thread of. Their goals are the same, but it is the path that is different, and that is the beauty of it.
Today, Indian cuisine stands at a juncture where it is being recognised for its diversity. The modern-day Indian food, as a result, is a global one—in many ways ahead of how cuisines of other nations have evolved. It’s not just a variation of our kitchen traditions—the newest, smartest and best ventures of Indian food around the world, like Masque, Semma, Naar, Sienna Cafe and more, are creating their own chapters in the great, richly diverse history of the Indian kitchen.
Today, they are doing so with grace, intelligence and aplomb that is on par—or greater—than every other cuisine around the world.
Vernika Awal is a food writer who is known for her research-based articles through her blog ‘Delectable Reveries’