We didn't start the fire: The birth of the Mumbai Native Kitchen & the 4 Mumbai home chefs who cooked up a storm for this Mumbai origins food story.

Alefiya Jane: Duck Moilee

There is a reason why I made a reference to Billy Joel’s popular song from 1989 in the headline to this post. Let me tell you why.

You might have seen me post about the #MumbaiNativeKitchen a fair bit on my social media last week. Well, it was a project that was very close to my heart and this post is about that.

It all started when I was approached a few weeks back by my young friend Diganta Chakraborty, who has recently joined The Soul Company, to do something together with them. The Soul Company, co-founded by Bengaluru based Somanna Muthanna, aims at delivering lifestyle experiences. I have met Som over a few meals in Mumbai and in Bengaluru in the past, and collaborating to create something with them sounded like a very good idea.

“You have told the stories of so many home chefs during the lockdown. Why don’t we think of a festival where we can celebrate their work?” said Diggy, as Diganta is popularly known, and that is how the #MumbaiNativeKitchen project was born.

What is the connection between headline and the story, you ask? Well, the job of a ‘curator’ (my role in this case) for a food festival is to come up with the theme for it, identify the right partners for it, get them on board, help them come up with menus and then act as a supporting pillar through the process.

In other words, to help bring to fore all the wondrous work that is out there. A facilitator you could say.

‘It’s been always burning, since the world’s been turning,’ as the song goes.

I was pretty clear in my head that the festival had to be about regional Indian food.

We have had the good fortune of experiencing a de facto regional Indian food festival in Mumbai thanks to the amazing food put out by local home chefs after the lockdown started. There was Malvani, Pathare Prabhu, Tamil, Keralite, Kashmiri, Rajasthani, Gujarati, Parsi, Memon, Punjabi, Bengali, Odia, Malwa and a lot more on the table.

Given that this was our first home chef festival, I felt that it would be a good idea to tell a ‘Mumbai origins story’ and Som (short for Somanna) and Diggy felt so too. The word ‘native’ came from Diggy and hence #MumbaiNativeKitchen.

Shabnam Mukadam: Kache kheema ke kebab

We tried to get onboard home chefs who represented food of some of the communities who were among the first to make Mumbai their home. Folks whose food we have tried in the past and loved. The fare was meant to be something different from the norm. Even if that meant going away from the usual crowd pullers which are easier to sell.

It was our humble, but earnest effort to the celebrate the living history of Mumbai. The city that I have had the good fortune of calling home for the last couple of decades.

Let me now tell you about the communities that were represented in the #MumbaiNativeKitchen festival, the home chefs who represented each and their menus.

Pathare Prabhu: Bimba Nayak

PC: Bimba Nayak: Kheema fry, kheema karanjii, kolambi che khichdi, pav, chutnechye saranga

The Pathare Prabhus are a small, but industrious community of folks who are considered to be among the earliest settlers of the island city. They are said to have come from the Aravalli region in Rajastha and trace their ancestry to Lord Rama and his sons Luv Kush.

Representing them in the #MumbaiNativeKitchen was none other than the indomitable Bimba Nayak, who was the first to have introduced me to both the history and the food of her community. Bimba herself had learnt this cuisine from her mother in law as a new bride. The first thing that Bimba will tell you about Pathare Prabhus is that they eat non-vegetarian food all 365 days of the year. She points out the Pathare Prabhu food and culture have Rajasthani, Gujarati, Parsi, Hyderabadi and Maharashtrian influences in it due to both the migratory roots of the community and to their being a part of the formation of the modern city of Mumbai.

Theatre actor, comic, food columnist and TV anchor Kunal Vijayakar, who belongs to the community, had once told me that the food he had grown up on was spicy and garlicky and difficult to find today.

Bimba presented dishes that the Pathare Prabhus have during Diwali. The menu starred chutnechye saranga (whole pomfret, stuffed and deep fried with chutney), Pathare Prabhu styled kheema and sliced potatoes which is served with pav on Sundays, kolambi chi khichdi (prawns pulav cooked in coconut milk) and baked kheema karanjis/ gujias (savoury mince meat stuffed ones, as against the more common grated coconut filled sweet ones).

Kutchi Memon: Shabnam Mukadam

Khichda, mitha chawal, kachhe kheema kebab: Shabnam Mukadam

Shabnam Mukadam was born into a Khoja Muslim family. A community the traces their origins to Iran. She is married into a Kutchi Memon family. A community that moved into Mumbai from Kutch in Gujarat (a rather arid land) and were among the earliest trading communities in Mumbai. Her mission is to take the food cooked in her home to an audience outside that has not tasted it and is known to be a big hearted host.

The food she presented was from the Kutchi Memon side. Incredibly soft and flavour packed kachhe kheema ke kebab. Shallow fried mutton mince meat kebabs with minimal spices, whose poetic flavours came primarily from the great quality of meat used.

Shabnam Mukadam: Mutton khichda

There was the Sunday joint family favourite, khichda. A dish made with mutton, 7 types of pulses and grains such as broken wheat, slow cooked over many hours. With condiments such as birista (fried onions) sliced fresh ginger, mint leaves and a squeeze of lime added in while eating, just as you would add condiments to the Vietnamese pho or the Burmese khow suey to customise them to your preference. The legend goes, says Shabnam, that the prophet Noah made khichda in the ark with whatever ingredients were around. Yes, Noah’s Ark is a part of the Islamic texts too.

Following this blockbuster repast for dessert was mithi chawal, rice cooked with jaggery and bejewelled with dried fruits. Not a dessert in the truest sense, but this subtly flavoured dish left one with a sweet taste in the mouth at the end.

Eastindian: Alefiya Jane

Alefiya Jane:
Buff potato chops with brown sauce, fugia, arroz fugath, sorpote, douck moilee, cucumber cake

In case you are wondering, the Eastindians (Alefiya tells me that it is one word) do not belong to the east of India, unlike us Bengalis or the Odias, Assamese or the Biharis. They are one of the earliest settlers of Mumbai, which is of course in the west of India!

From what I understand, they trace their origins to both the Kolis, the fisher folks native to Mumbai, and to the Portuguese. They took up the Catholic faith when the Portuguese came to India and later worked with the British (hence ‘Eastindian’ after the East India Company). Their food and culture has a distinct Portuguese influence. Their dishes draw a lot on locally available produce, fish, meat. The cornerstone of their cuisine is a spice called the Eastindian bottle masala. A spice traditionally made once a year at home with a mix of anything between 25 to 40 spices and stored in bottles (hence bottle masala). Their food, as well as that of the others such as the Kolis and the Pathare Prabhus, the original settlers of the city, is rarely available in restaurants and your best hope to taste this at present are through home chefs who present their food commercially. Unless you know someone from the community of course.

Representing the Eastindians in the festival was the effervescent and very talented Alefiya Jane. Model, home baker and part time home chef. She offered a menu which was based on memories of the extensive tables that her grandmother used to present for their extended family. on happy occasions. Incidentally, Alefiya cooked from the 300 year old house in Uttan, in the outskirts of Mumbai where her grandmom used to live and where she lives now, for the festival.

Alefiya Jane: Pork sorpotel

In Alefiya’s menu for the #MumbaiNativeFestival was buff potato chops served with a buff stock based brown sauce. The sauce was a speciality of her grandmom and I had never had this combination earlier. It added another dimension of joy to the dish.

There was pork and buff sorpotel. A must have in EastIndian marriages in the pre-caterer days of yore, says Alefiya. The wedding sorpotel would be made with the cuts of pork and buff that did not make it to the vindaloos and the moilee and other dishes made for the wedding, and was most sought after. A bit like the Parsi aleti paleti which was made with discarded organs of meat during weddings (tasted very different though). The Eastindian sorpotel uses the bottle masala as the base and in my experience is less sour than the Goan Catholic sorpotel.

Then there was duck moilee. Duck slow cooked till it was ‘fall of the bone,’ with sliced potatoes, bottle masala and red wine. To go with this was arroz fugath ( a simple, slow cooked pulao) and fugias (fried yeast balloon breads) which you could mop the curries with. For dessert, there was the ‘working man/ farmer’s cucumber cake made with fresh cucumbers, cucumber water, grated coconut and dried fruits, which had a very interesting cucumber hit which grew on you slowly.

Parsi: Rhea Mitra Dalal

PC: Rhea Mitra Dalal: Prawn patio, lagan nu custard, rice, mori dar, tareli machhi

Rhea Mitra Dalal is a Bengali, who is married to a Parsi. Cultural anthropologist cum archeologist cum caterer cum food maven, Dr Kurush Dalal. She learnt her Parsi cooking from the very best. Her mother in law, the late Dr Katy Dalal, who was an archeologist, author of many definitive books on Parsi cuisine and the founder of the Parsi catering enterprise, Katy’s Kitchen, which Kurush and Rhea run now.

Her menu was a representation of dishes found in Parsi homes which you are unlikely to find in the odd Irani cafe in south Mumbai that offers Parsi food today, or even in weddings and Navjotes. So none of the usual suspects – dhansak, sali boti, pulao dal, farcha, patra ni machhi, saas ni maachhi, etc, here.

Instead there was a ‘sagan nu bhonu.’ Dishes served in birthdays and other happy occasions at Parsi homes. Dhunn dar patio. Rice, a light tud dal and a spicy, tangy coconut based curry which could be made with prawns (as it was in Rhea’s) or fish or mutton, along with vegetables. The three (dal, rice and patio) are to be combined and eaten. To make the meal complete was tareli machhi. Fried fish. Surmai in this case. Smeared with turmeric, chilli powder, salt and lime juice and then fried. For dessert, there was the lagan nu custard which Katy’s Kitchen is famous for and which we love in our family.

Rhea later said that this was first commercial meal that Kurush and her had cooked together in the kitchen of their new house in new Bombay. The Katy’s Kitchen premises had been been given up due to the lockdown as was most of the staff and yet the pandemic offered a new start in a sense for the two.

As it did for all the other home chefs that made the #MumbaiNativeKitchen festival what it is. Bimba, Shabnam and Alefiya, like Rhea, had all looked the pandemic in its eyes, gone into their kitchens and took the fight right back to it. Creating many soulful meals in the process. Bringing joy to so many.

How is that for “turning poison into medicine” story?

Well, that is the spirit of Mumbai. And the message from the #MumbaiNativeKitchen for us all.

PS:

The festival happened on Sunday, 8th November, 2020. An earnest effort with a lot of hard work put in by the home chefs and the Soul Company team, with the odd delivery glitch as the latter was outsourced, but it was a learning process for all and hopefully the start of a beautiful friendship for us with the food of Mumbai.

Here are 4 videos that I shot with each of the 4 home chefs which might give you an idea about their communities, their cuisines and menus. Please do subscribe to my youtube channel to catch more such conversations. I have linked their Instagram handles given in case you want to contact them or follow them.

Bimba Nayak