A still from one of the episodes of the documentary
For Kandivali-based director Nihar Desai, 29, food is more than just about nourishment or sustenance. It's about the hands that nurture and put food on our tables, our memories of taste, and stories that abound in the kitchen. So, when his paternal grandmother passed away in June, it was only natural that he and his parents would dig into her (and the family's) favourite recipes of monsoon, and cook through the grief. "I had been documenting my dadi's recipes of Gujarati food, but couldn't follow up. So, after she passed away, I felt like I had to do this. It was our way of dealing with her absence," shares Desai.
He decided to shoot the process so that he and his cousins had a memoir of the food they'd grown up eating. "A friend then suggested that I could also interview my mother, Jyoti Desai, about it," he adds. And so, somewhere between rolling patra leaves, doling out jaggery and poppy seeds laddus, and learning about Jyoti's childhood in Paldi village in Ahmedabad district, he ended up creating a seven-part documentary on Gujarati food, titled Aav re Varsaad.
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"Aav re varsaad, dhebariyo parsad, uni uni rotli ne karela nu shaak [Come, oh rain, with bountiful delicacies, steaming soft rotlis with a bitter gourd sabji]," his mother sing-songs in the trailer, reminiscing about splashing around in the rainwater with her sisters and father, who'd sing the song. It's a song all Gujjus are familiar with, Desai tells us, and hence, captures the essence of the food memory project that features fares of the season.
Nihar and Jyoti Desai
The cooking came first, and the series, produced by Desai's Bay101 Film Studio, followed, he says. "I was making this for the family, but a couple of friends also seemed interested. It was only after I showed them the trailer, and they said it looked great, that it took the shape of a documentary." The seven dishes — the recipes of which are posted with each video — were also selected in a way that someone from outside the community can learn something new.
This organic approach is possibly the reason that the four-to-five-minute shorts gently let the viewer into his mother's intimate kitchen space, where she and her husband churn out ghugras, Shraavan dishes like kand and suran khichdi, sing songs about playing with paper boats while frying patra rolls, and more. "After a long time, I got to speak to my mother about her life before me. She was initially nervous. So, I would chat with her, telling her we're just rehearsing, but shoot it so that she'd be herself," he reveals.
Although layered with photos from the family album and anecdotes unique to Gujarati households, the documentary has found takers outside of the community. Desai attributes that to the universal feeling of nostalgia: "More than the recipe videos, I realised that my mothers' experience [of leaving home] is something everyone goes through." In a way, the project is also a fitting answer to her concerns about the next generation — whether they will remember these recipes. This was a way to document that family heritage, Desai concludes, adding there's nothing as comforting as home food.
Log on to @bay101.in on Instagram to watch the series
Jaggery and poppy seeds laddus
Usually made during festivals like Ganesh Chaturthi
Ingredients
- 2 kg coarsely-ground wheat flour
- 1 kg jaggery
- ½ cup sesame seeds
- 500 ml milk
- 250 gm grated dry coconut
- 750 gm ghee
- 2 cups powdered sugar
- 1 cup poppy seeds
- 1 tbsp nutmeg
- 1 tbsp jaifal
- 1 tbsp elaichi
Method
Dry-roast the grated coconut and sesame seeds on low heat separately for 20 minutes. Mix the flour with the ghee, adding milk little by little, to form a crumbly dough. Make muthiyas — oblong balls with concave finger impressions — with the dough. Deep-fry these balls in sesame oil with 2 tbsp ghee on a low flame, and let them cool. Once cooled, pound them in a mortar and pass through a sieve. For the jaggery laddus, add roasted coconut, sesame and nutmeg to half the churma mixture. Melt 1 kg jaggery in half a cup of ghee. Tip in the melted jaggery into the churma, and combine it.
Grease your palms with ghee and form laddus the size of golf balls. Cool them and dig in.
For the poppy seeds laddus, take the other half of the churma and rub it between your palms with 200 gm of ghee. Combine it with jaifal, elaichi, poppy seeds and powdered sugar. Once mixed, shape them into laddus and roll them in poppy seeds to form a crust.
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