How Puja khichuri and Onam sadya made it to restaurants

As festival food goes mainstream, enterprising home cooks are dishing out elaborate feasts — on their table and as takeaway

FASTING AND FEASTING: An elaborate dastarkhwan at writer Sadia Dehlvi’s home and a pujor thaala (left)

Fasting and feasting alike are known to engender culinary ingenuity – and enterprise. This Navratra, if you’ve had your fill of the likes of sumac rice risotto, kuttu crisps, singhada tortellini and no onion-no garlic Chinese that creative restaurants in Delhi and Mumbai are dishing out to keep businesses afloat during the lean nine days of “fasting”, gear up for some no-holds-barred Pujo feasts.

In a country as complex as India, it is perhaps fitting that abstention and excess should coexist. If Navratras are a period to shy away from certain culinary choices, Durga Puja sees no such dietary impositions. From aloo dum and luchi to biryani and egg rolls, pop Kolkata dishes are pandal fare during the festival that encourages social bonhomie. Like with every festival, however, more elaborate or delicate dishes than these street staples get cooked within homes. This year, enterprising home cooks are serving up feasts not just in their own kitchens but in restaurants, for takeaway and home deliveries, in a determined bid to find a larger cosmopolitan audience for their festive fare.

In fact, if your sole reason for going festive during the Pujas is food (and pandal crowds terrify you), Mumbai-based blogger and home cook Rhea Mitra Dalal of Euphorhea Kitchen has the perfect solution: A home-delivered Bengali feast with dishes such as narkel’er bora, palong shaak bhaja, jhinge poshto, bhapa chingri, ilish’er tel jhol but also vegetarian bhog specials — bhuni khichuri and labra.

If you want to check into a restaurant during the festive season, Kolkata home cook Iti Misra is showcasing her culinary talent at Monkey Bar outlets in Delhi and Kolkata by way of the special “pujor thaalas” (veg, chicken and fish) this season. There is also Armenian-Bengali restaurant Lavaash By Saby which is putting one “Puja special dish” every day on its menu through the nine days of the Navratras. Then, in Bengaluru and Delhi, Commeat, a collective of home cooks, has announced home-dining experiences where you can book yourself a place in the homes of passionate cooks and foodies Rajyasree Sen (DelhiNCR) and Varnika Ghosh (Bengaluru) who will cook up bhuri bhojs (literally, delightful and complete feasts). There is also Mumbai-based home cook Gitika Saikia, known for her Assamese pop-ups, who is offering a medley of Bengali and Nepali Durga Puja dishes this season — for home delivery/takeaway.

Clearly, Durga Puja fare is going mainstream. This, however, is just part of a larger trend across India. In the last few years, there has been a huge resurgence of interest in regional and community foods, prompted by the incessant sharing of pictures on Instagram. This phenomenon has converged with the evolving tastes of a millennial audience that wants a taste of the new and the untried instead of the familiar. Even in cities such as Delhi, hith- erto regarded as conservative foodwise, growing culinary cosmopolitanism is evident in the “buzz” surrounding festive eats. Last month, for instance, saw unprecedented frenzy over the Onam Sadya — though few Delhi “foodies” really knew about the meal or the rituals surrounding it prior to what may have been their first tryst with a banana leaf. “Thanks to social media where people had been posting pictures of the sadya much before the festival, we were sold out for all three days when we served the sadya,” says Thomas Fenn, partner at Mahabelly, a Kerala food restaurant in Delhi. Two years ago, when the restaurant first opened, Fenn had served the sadya, primarily as a way of getting through to Delhi’s Malayali community. Last year, he found, interest growing even among other diners. This year, the response was phenomenal with the restaurant serving 1,200 sadya meals (of 22-25 dishes) over three days. Even, at restaurants such as Sanadige, Delhi, which neither do exclusively Kerala fare nor were in fact promoting the sadya, there was unprecedented demand and chefs had to cook special festive meals. This, in a city where “south Indian” till very recently only meant “crisp dosas”!

The partaking of a culture through its food has been getting popular all over the world. In India too, cities such as Lucknow, Hyderabad and older parts of Delhi and Mumbai have been seeing “gastrotourists” during occasions such as Ramzan. It’s this phenomenon that is extending to other festivals and into other spaces too.

“This festive surge is due to the whole rise of the home cooks,” points out Rushina Munshaw Ghildiyal, writer and consultant. Indeed, home cooks in India have never been in more demand. Earlier, enterprising ones started small caterings or were roped in for hotel promotions; now, entrepreneurial opportunities are too many to count.

One of the most interesting recent food trends has been the opening up of homes to outsiders for meals, where the hosts/cooks explain cultural nuances too. Unique festive feasts find a larger number of takers. Writer Sadia Dehlvi’s elaborate dastarkhwans at her Nizamuddin home during Eid are always heavily booked, says the Commeat team.

Writer and home cook Plavaneeta Borah, who organises Assamese pop-ups, says she is planning one for Diwali and Kongali Bihu (which coincide being harvest festivals). From pani pitha (pancakes) to jaluk diya mangsho (Assamese pepper mutton), til diya murgi (chicken cooked with black sesame seeds), gahori (pork with bamboo shoots and bhoot jolokia), patot diya maas ( fish wrapped in banana leaves) and more, this festive feast will be just one more reason to celebrate.