A Mumbai non-profit gets migrant women from 10 states to share lesser-known recipes in an e-book
Last year, when organisers of non-profit Mumbai Mobile Creche (MMC) asked Seema Rajput from Chhattisgarh, a cleaner on a constructions site in Juinagar, to share her fondest food memory, she picked the khurmi.
The traditional sweet prepared with wheat flour and coconut was her link to Mungeli, the village where she was born and raised, before moving to Mumbai a few years ago. The dish is made during Teej, a festival celebrated in North India, to welcome the monsoon. During the festival, women fast through the day, and break it by biting into the snack. "We observe it so that our husbands may attain long and healthy lives.
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Enjoying it with other women is one of my best memories," she says. It's lesser-known regional recipes such as this that have made it to Food Memories of Migrant Women, an e-book released by the NGO to put the spotlight on the fascinating expanse of Indian culinary traditions.
"When they move to Mumbai, they are often forced to work with their husbands either on construction sites or as domestic help. Due to lack of space and access to ingredients, they never end up making those dishes here," says the NGO's health coordinater Shiny Varghese.
Mamoni Gor, who works as a domestic help and lives on a construction site in Wadala, agrees. A native of Nagoan district of Assam, she has prepared the Patishapta, a rice flour crepe stuffed with sweet coconut, just twice in the last four years that she has been Mumbai. The dish is prepared on the occasion of Bihu, one of the biggest festivals in Assam. The first time she prepared it was when she was 14 years old.
"My mother taught me the recipe, and I distinctly remember I had got it all wrong," she laughs. But now, Gor is a pro and has even taught the recipe to her sister-in-law and a few friends. "The dish reminds me of home, because it signifies togetherness," she said.
Mamoni Gaur chose the patishapti as it’s simple and tasty. Pic/Ashish Raje
How to make Patishapti
Ingredients
2 cups of Bora saul (glutinous rice or 1 bowl rice flour)
1 bowl wheat flour only if you're using rice flour • If using Bora saul, omit the wheat flour
1 cup coconut
1/4 cup sugar
4-5 pods cardamom
1 cup of water
Cooking oil
Method
Soak the Bora Saul grains overnight, dry it and ground into a flour.
Dry roast the flour in a pan until it turns sticky.
Pound the cardamom
Dry roast the coconut in the pan. Once it turns a little brown, add sugar and cardamom. Roast the mixture until it turns a light brown.
Once the Bora Saul flour cools down, add water to the flour until it has a thick consistency.
Rub oil on a pan. Spread batter in a circle.
When the pancake turns golden brown, add the coconut mix in the centre of the pancake and roll up the pancake.
Remove the pancake and serve hot.
Using riceflour
Don't dry roast the rice flour. Mix the rice flour and wheat flour in a bowl and add water until the batter obtains a thick pouring consistency like heavy cream. Keep the mix aside and let it rest for 10 minutes.
Prepare the coconut mix as instructed.
Proceed with the rest of the recipe as instructed in the column to your left.
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