About Chow from the Family Kitchen

There are certain things you are good at and certain things you are not. I’m not an inch as good as my Mom or both my Grandmothers when it comes to cooking. To me spending time in the kitchen meant bonding with each of them. Offering to lend a hand in the kitchen has always been an excuse I used and continue to use -its been my way of learning from them how to do things right and at the same time be their ‘official critic’ :) I've always loved every bit of it and can't wait for a trip home for that.

Be it my Mom’s or Bapama’s (paternal grandmother) or Mouma’s (maternal grandmother whom I fondly call Mouma) kitchen, apart from helping out with the vegetables and dishes, I always landed up creating a mish-mash of ingredients that I called “my invention”; sometime palatable, but sometime not. You could hear them going from…"Kassa kartha go chalda tu” (what are you doing child?) ….to “Nutha bastha ve ek kadena!”(Could you just sit down and stay put?).

Over the years my experiments in the kitchen have grown larger in scale, and in the process I developed my own approach towards cooking- very different from theirs. Nonetheless, I 've gotten to learn a great deal about traditions, rituals,cooking and food as a whole by just being around them in the kitchen. It’s indeed been this dash of love they add thats made all the difference.

Although Mom, Mouma and Bappama have tried out so many things – similar and different- I discovered that they are all very unique in their styles of cooking. None of them share a technique, despite the fact that they share recipes. They are each distinctive in what they cook.

I cannot really classify Mom’s cooking under one category because every where we've traveled she has incorporated one dish from the region into our weekly menu- and whatever she cooks she's fabulous at it; while Mouma’s kitchen has traditionally been Konkani , Bapama adds a flavor of Andhra cuisine into hers.

Alternatively, my MIL's kitchen is more of a combination of authentic Konkani and Dakshin Kannada cuisine. (There you go the 4th style of cooking right in my backyard!) My Aunts also share the same style as that of her.

My MIL's cooking is way different from my Mom’s and has an essence of coconut in most of her curries. Both of them do their share of exchanging recipes and experimenting. (So I’m not the only one!) That way I get a double dose of the same ingredients..... though the outcomes may be different....if you know what I mean.

Than just being friends, two people have been more family to us. One introduced me to Italian and French cooking while the other to Tamil cuisine.

In all, a trip home implies a “Series of Feasts” for the palate, that of both my husband and myself.

As an effort to cherish and savor the taste of the cooking of all these terrific chefs in the family, for life, I’ve been thinking (for a long time now) to have a compilation of all their recipes in my recipe box. But then with the advent of the digital camera and Blogger, I decided to ...you guessed it...Start a Food Blog....jump into the bandwagon....and have fun along the way as I document Amgele Gharkadche Rundhapp..... in other words......the Chow from the Family Kitchen!