Food writers Anisha Rachel Oommen and Aysha Tanya have compiled ‘A Kitchen of One’s Own’, a community cookbook that documents heirloom family recipes from across India.
In Zarine Mohideen’s home, any family gathering is almost incomplete without unearthing a secret recipe and cooking it with much fervour in an attempt to get the consistencies and flavours just right.
Known by the name Thakkadi, this dish, explains the Indian writer based in the San Francisco Bay Area, comprises tender meat cooked with dumplings into a gravy-like consistency. The 200-year-old recipe, she notes, was born in Tirunelveli and included fist-sized dumplings made with rice flour and flecks of coconut. Today its modern successor focuses on smaller portions.
Did you find this anecdote interesting?
You’ll be amazed to know that this is one of the several stories and heritage recipes that have been compiled into a book ‘A Kitchen of One’s Own’ by friends and colleagues Aysha Tanya and Anisha Rachel Oommen.
Food writers by profession, the duo were engaged in individual ventures before kick-starting their endeavour Goya in 2016. It happened whilst they were working at a food magazine in Bengaluru, as Anisha recounts.
“A majority of food publications at the time focused on restaurants and there was very little talk of home cooking. We wanted to create a project that would document this aspect of cooking and Goya was our way of doing just this,” says Anisha.
The digital archive collaborates with photographers, writers, and brands in the F&B space and invites just about anyone to share their stories related to food.
‘A Kitchen of One’s Own’ is the physical manifestation of the digital collection of recipes and was published in 2022.
