Whatever happened to Grandma's cooking

The mention of grandmothers certainly brings a lot of memories with it. Prayer lessons, hymns, lazy vacation afternoons, even scoldings and beatings. But while some of these things I still have, it's the food they cooked that I miss the most. And the magnitude of its loss is something I’m just beginning to realise.

The best part of whatever grandmoms cooked was its authenticity. They never used mixers or non-stick pans. No readymade spices or curry pastes either. It was all pestle and mortar, grindstone and fresh ingredients that came all the way from the native village. I think the use of a gas cylinder as opposed to a wood-fired stove was the only thing that kept the food from being one hundred percent authentic.

Then, there were the recipes. So many of them are now lost and those that are still made at home just don’t taste the same. I'll start with my paternal grandmom. An orthodox, stubborn, short-tempered woman from North Goa who liked to rule her house with an iron fist!! She was a great cook though and spent a lot of time in the kitchen. She was an expert at fish and went to the market every Sunday for fresh catch. And unlike how it’s done now, she shelled and de-veined the prawns and gutted and sliced the fish all at home. She used a lot of coconut in her food and all the grinding was done using an old grindstone that she got from her ancestral village home. She made a great variety of fish curries and all of them were lip-smackin good. Some of my favourites were dried shrimp and mackerel with grated coconut and chillies called 'Kismoor' in Konkani, her brilliant Solkadi (even the kokum pods for it came straight from Goa), and fried Pomfret stuffed with coconut chutney. When she made chicken on Sundays, she never used broiler, it was always the 'desi murgi'. And sometimes a bunch of unhatched eggs of different sizes came along with it, which went into the curry. Fuckin amazing is all I can say!! The desserts she made were the most unique ones I’ve ever had. Grated cucumber mixed with jaggery and steamed in a banana leaf, yellow bananas heated in sugar syrup and served with puris. I rest my case.

My other grandmom was a much mellower and likeable character, but she was an amazing cook as well, so much so that distant relatives from Mom's side of the family frequently dropped in to have lunch at her place. I spent many summer vacations there and every time I came back a few pounds heavier. She was great at cooking crabs and shellfish of all kinds. And even with her faded eyesight in old age, she was just as good. Sucking on the bone-marrow from her mutton curry is a favourite childhood memory. Come Diwali and she used to start her routine of preparing traditional sweet and savoury snacks. These were so popular, that demand for them came from all parts of the family, near and distant. Always eager to please, she would send out these goodies in packets to everyone who asked for them. The snacks we buy from shops for Diwali these days don’t even come close.

Then there are the memories. Going to the fish market on Sundays with my paternal grandmom was an experience in itself. All the fisherwoman turned their attention to their most regular and most demanding customer and she always managed to get the best catch and the best bargain at the same time. Mom and Dad have been trying to do that for years now, without much success. During summer vacations at maternal grandma's place, crabs used to be brought home and declawed alive. The terrified look on my cousin's face as she jumped up on the kitchen table is also a favourite vacation memory.

I could go on and on about the food my grandmoms cooked, the methods and ingredients they used and the stories surrounding their cooking. But the more I write, the more nostalgic I get. So I'll just end this post with a random but beautiful thought. How about a restaurant where only grandmoms cook all the food?