There is a picture of my grandmama and me, when I was five, looking up at her as she cut rounds of chocolate chip cookie dough into perfect circles. While baking, she was meticulous. Her recipe book (which is still in my possession) was full of handwritten notes on everything from an exact recipe of the perfect roti dough to a 3-tier wedding cake she made for my parents’ wedding in 1996. She taught me the basics of baking—how to level off the flour from a one-cup measure, and to gently warm cold milk to ‘take the chill out’ so our batter wouldn’t seize. But while her baking was exacting, her savoury cooking took on a different colour altogether.
One of my first introductions to cooking with feeling was watching Sanjeev Kapoor’s Khana Khazaana, where he always finished his dishes with namak, swaad anusaar — salt, to be added as per taste. It intrigued me, with my need for complete recipes. I couldn’t understand how people didn’t measure every teaspoon of masala they added to the curry. When I tried doing that, it always came out too spicy or not spicy enough, too salty or lacking salt. With practice, said the women in my family, comes the ability to discern flavour. My mother told me one day that when she dipped her hand into the salt jar, she could ‘feel’ the correct amount of salt — almost as if she could count every crystal in the creases of her fingertips. I never had to sprinkle extra salt on top of the dal she made.
My paternal aunt, who was always in close proximity as I grew up, took over my “cooking lessons” after my grandmother passed away. With her, I explored non-Indian dishes like roast buffalo with garlic mashed potatoes, Thai curries in all their colours, and pumpkin soup with grilled cheese sandwiches. We never had any strict measurements for any of these. Depending on the spiciness of the curry paste, the garlickiness of the garlic, or the sweetness of the pumpkin, we were constantly tasting, adjusting, balancing.
There is no doubt that with practice comes perfection. When you cook every day, you understand what each family member likes — less salt for dad, extra spicy for mom, and always a dollop of ghee on top of the rotis, for everybody. Mouthfeel and memory are powerful tools for a cook. Food is such a significant part of our upbringing, and as we grow up and away from our homes, it is but natural to yearn for the comfort and peace of familiar flavours.
When I was sixteen, I left home for the first time for an international exchange program to a town in northern Denmark, with a population of only about 50,000 — a far cry from Bombay, which was already bursting at the seams. I cooked for my host family while I was there —an “Indian” meal every Tuesday. I put ‘Indian’ in quotation marks because our native ingredients were few and far between, and their gentle palate couldn’t handle the spice I could add. I remember one memorable occasion where I ate egg curry with my hands (appalling!) and they joined me in my endeavour to properly “taste” the food I had cooked.
Ten years after that, I found myself in the matchbox kitchen of my student accommodation in London, alongside my flatmates from across the world. We huddled over a bubbling hotpot, trying to get warm in the biting cold, as we plopped in stretchy potato noodles, prawns, and thinly sliced beef slivers. Despite our shared language barrier, we talked about what our food meant to us — from elaborate midnight meals to almost setting the kitchen on fire when one of us (who shall remain unnamed) left the oven on overnight.
There have been many instances of learning recipes that require ‘feeling’ from across the world. There is a certain sense of tactility one uses when cooking, not to mention the other senses — sight, smell, sound, and taste. Victoria from Brazil taught me how to make brigadeiros, traditional Brazilian truffles. We used the warmth of our palms to roll the sticky mix into imperfect ovals before drowning them in chocolate sprinkles. With Claire from Vietnam, I folded about 100 homemade dumplings in an hour. Tianna from Colombia often made me cheese-stuffed arepas for breakfast—her mother’s recipe.
To quote Professor Emily Contois, “Foodies, after all, aren’t just folks who love to eat. They embrace every aspect of food, folding it into their identities with an artisan-crafted wooden spoon.” Certainly, I have been luckier than most to grow up in a home where everyone cooked, and to have a world-view shaped by this love for food and cooking by feeling. Growing up on a steady diet of watching my mother, aunts, and grandmothers cooking (as well as a concerning amount of Julie & Julia rewatches), held me in good stead when I eventually started cooking for myself. This is not to say that cooking with feeling is perfection. Mishaps happen, like accidentally leaving heavy-duty appliances on overnight. Crying while cutting onions, the sting of lemon juice on an open cut, or the sharp prick of hot oil splattering from the pan — only sharpens the sense of intuition and makes the cooking experience all the more flavourful.
