Healthy to junk, savoury to sweet, Patil Kaki promises to deliver authentic, homemade Maharashtrian snacks to your home
Geeta Patil makes Maharashtrian snacks that are hard to get in the lockdown and are otherwise available in the city only during the festive season. Pics/Sameer Markande
Not all heroes wear capes. My mother, Kamlabai Nivugale, wore an apron. Her superpower was cooking,” smiles Geeta Patil, as she begins talking about her mother’s catering business in Kolhapur back in ’70s. “I’d sit on a step stool and help her stir curries in large pots. As a kid, I was just her assistant. I couldn’t single-handedly take on the kitchen, but I remember being a chopping board ninja. She loved having me around, helping her cut vegetables,” recalls Patil, 46. The mother-daughter duo would serve as many as 20 people per day with authentic Kolhapuri veg and non-veg thalis.
Today, Patil is the masterchef of her own home in Santa Cruz. She has around 10 women working under her in a small, rented setup in Vakola. Together, they make mouth-watering Maharashtrian snacks, ranging from poha, chivda and shankarpali to chakli, besan ladoo, ukadiche modak and karanji. “It all started in 2017, when my husband, Govinda, lost his job as a clerk in a dental lab. We had to educate our two sons—Vinit, 15, and Darshan, 21. I had to step up and use my cooking skills, inherited from my aai, to make a living.”