Two recently-released cookbooks Crumbs: Bread Stories and Recipes for The Indian Kitchen by Saee Koranne-Khandekar and Karwar to Kolhapur Via Mumbai by Smita Deo are treasure troves of traditional recipes. While Crumbs aims to serve as a comprehensive compendium of bread making techniques, Karwar to Kolhapur documents the underrepresented cuisines of Maharashtra and Karnataka through a personal journey. We interviewed their authors for an insight into their individual cooking styles.
Saee Koranne-Khandekar
These are troubled times for bread consumers as people are increasingly shirking gluten on the advice of dieticians, doctors and fitness experts. This didn’t however deter Saee Koranne-Khandekar, a food blogger with her own YouTube channel, from making the contentious carb the focus of her first book. Crumbs: Bread Stories and Recipes for the Indian Kitchen is a handy manual for novice bread makers as it starts with the very basics of baking before progressing to a compendium on types of bread and how to prepare them. The author schools readers on yeast varieties, flours and baking temperatures and tools and provides recipes for white sandwich loaf, pizza bread, pita and focaccia and a few Indian specialities such as ladi pao and the Goan poee. We asked Koranne-Khandekar about her favourite bread, bakeries and the bread myths she’d like to bust. Edited excerpts:
What are some flours that should make their way back into our kitchens?
A whole lot of them. We seem to have forgotten all about our fabulous indigenous grains. Quinoa and spelt have suddenly appeared in our lives for a pretty buck whereas we could just run to the local grocer and buy good quality local grains and flours such as jowar, bajra and ragi. Local makkai atta is now replaced by fancy imported polenta where the former can yield just as great results. In fact, even if we go back to getting our own wheat flour milled, we will have conquered a lot in the health benefits and ethical eating realm! Small chakkis (mills) will get employment and we can be assured of unadulterated flour.
What is your favourite type of bread to bake and eat?
I love making sourdough breads. The pure alchemy of it excites me as does the flavour profile. I also enjoy experimenting with local flours. One of my favourite breads to make is a ragi, chocolate and walnut bread that has a complex and deep flavour and has a moreish texture.
What is your favourite Mumbai bakery and what is your standard order there?
A standard order at most Irani or Muslim bakeries around the city is the pao and, if I’m lucky, brun. City Bakery in Worli and Yazdani in Fort have been making some fabulous bread for decades now. I also really enjoy the walnut and raisin sourdough sold by The Baker’s Dozen chain and the kokum baguette by Theobroma.
Bread has got a bad rap. What is the healthiest way to consume it?
The only reason commercial bread is facing the kind of criticism it does is the long list of chemical additives it proudly shows off on its packs. We don’t really need bleached flour and improvers in our bread. The best kind of bread to eat every day is one that is made fresh (from whatever kind of flour) and does not contain any ingredient that you don’t recognise from a normal kitchen.
While writing the book were you concerned about the gaining trend of eschewing gluten?
I did have it at the back of my mind all the time and there is a recipe for gluten-free bread in the book. Having said that, I must add that there is some scientific evidence to prove that wheat by itself is not what’s causing the intolerance. We have, after all, been eating wheat for centuries now. It is the way it is treated (bleaching of flours, for instance, or the removal of all fibre) and the fact that it gets paired with all sorts of unrecognisable chemicals in the process of commercial bread making that makes it difficult to digest. If you make a loaf of bread at home, even an all-maida one, it will still be much less harmful and much more flavourful than the bread you would buy. This is because you would use pure, unadulterated ingredients and allow bread the slow, natural process of fermentation it requires to make it optimally nutritious and easily digestible.
Name a Mumbai restaurant that prepares a fine loaf.
I’ve quite enjoyed the bread at The Table in Colaba.
Name a bread myth you’d like to bust.
People often think that bread making is very difficult and is a very exact science. This is untrue. Bread making is more forgiving than baking a cake because a little here and there will still produce an edible loaf. All you need is to understand yeast!
Crumbs: Bread Stories and Recipes for The Indian Kitchen by Saee Koranne-Khandekar, Hachette, Rs450.
Smita Deo
Homemaker Smita Deo’s writing debut is a mish-mash of memoir, recipe book and as the title Karwar To Kolhapur via Mumbai suggests, travelogue. Deo, who belongs to the Gaud Saraswat Brahmin community, was born and raised in Mumbai, but most of her book is inspired by her memories of her ancestral village, Aversa near Karwar in Karnataka, from where her parents migrated. The book alternates between nostalgic narratives about Deo’s frequent trips to Karwar and recipes from the two gastronomically-rich states of Maharashtra and Karnataka. The Kolhapur in the book’s title is thanks to the author’s in-laws who hail from that Maharashtrian town. The reader is acquainted with Deo’s immediate and extended family members and friends through recipes of their signature dishes such as Aai’s karli ambat (kingfish curry), Balu Kaka’s chicken curry, her mother-in-law’s Kolhapuri fish and Shinde Aunty’s matki usal (moth beans curry). We’re also treated to recipes that are seldom explored by restaurants such as Kolhapuri pandhra rassa (mutton in a white gravy); kadgi chakko (tender jackfruit curry); aluvati (curry made with colocasia leaves); and roas (sweetened coconut milk with cardamom). We asked Deo about her favourite Mumbai restaurants and food markets. Edited excerpts:
Name five staple ingredients you’re likely to find in every Maharashtrian kitchen.
Coarse peanut powder, goda masala, jaggery, tamarind and fresh coconut.
What is the best place for vada pao in Mumbai?
Outside Dadar Catering College in Prabhadevi.
If not the vada pao, what do you think could be Mumbai’s iconic dish?
One cannot replace the famous vada pao ever, but the Frankie and the Bombay sandwich would be next on the list.
What is your favourite Maharashtrian restaurant in Mumbai?
My favorite place for a Maharashtrian meal in Mumbai is Prakash in Dadar.
Name some ingredients you’d like to see restaurants work with.
Tirphal (Sichuan pepper), kanda lasoon masala, Kolhapuri masala and goda masala.
Where do you buy fish in Mumbai?
I usually go to the Four Bungalows fish market for my daily supply of fish but if I need a huge quantity then it’s the Malad fish market, which opens at 7am. I pick up a variety of fish, but shellfish is usually first on the agenda. My family loves my fried prawns and clam koshimbir.
You’re a vegetarian, while a good chunk of your recipes and cooking is meat-centric. How do you manage that?
The challenge is obvious I suppose, because I can’t taste the dish and have to go by pure instinct. The advantage is that others get to eat my share.
Why do you think we don’t see enough of the food of the hinterland in our eateries?
We do have quite a few Maharashtrian restaurants in Mumbai but they mostly serve Malvani food. Vada pao, misal, sabudana vada and Malwani food is the equivalent of Maharashtrian cuisine for Mumbaikars. Some of the food from the hinterland, such as curries with tirphal that has a very strong flavour, is an acquired taste, but restaurateurs have to give diners that push.
Karwar To Kolhapur Via Mumbai by Smita Deo, Rs1,000.