Author Jyotsana Shahane shares how Narayani Nayak’s out of print cookbooks inspired her to make necessary additions and changes in The Classic Konkan Cookbook with a view to open the cuisine’s secrets to a range of food lovers. An edited excerpt
When Narayani Nayak brought out her book, Cookery Craft in 1952, very few cookbooks were available in India. Most housewives gleaned information from handwritten notes passed down from mother to daughter. Some books were written by Britishers stationed in India, giving Anglo- Indian recipes for Cofta ka Carree, Quorema’s, Country Captain, Doopiajas, Hindustanee and Hussenee curries recorded from conversations with their khansamas, along with several more pages of household and housekeeping tips and advice.
It was only in the late 1950s that women’s magazines started getting published, and soon recipes printed in them were prized, cut out and preserved.
When Cookery Craft received such ‘a good reception from the public’, Nayak resolved to revise and rewrite it ‘to serve as a convenient kitchen companion to every housewife, who is receptive to new ideas and is interested in good cooking, and particularly to the new bride about to start her home’.
In 1964, she published 500 Easy Recipes that incorporated her two earlier books (Cookery Craft and 200 Recipes). This book was extremely popular among Konkani-speaking people in India, predating all other cookbooks by a good 15 years.
What makes the book stand out, even today, is Nayak’s ability to give exact weights and measures. Up until then, cookbooks were quite vague about amounts, mentioning only ingredients and a technique of cooking that was not always logical or easy to follow.
In Konkani food, unlike other cuisines in India, each preparation is named according to the ingredients used and the degree of density. Nayak followed a cogent method, which she detailed in each recipe, and gave an indication of the consistency of each preparation (thick, solid, soupy, gravy and more).
To think that Nayak was educated only up to Class V is amazing. She was born in Karkala in Udupi district and learnt to write only after her marriage. She also taught herself English, among other languages, for the sake of her children. Her grandson recalls her carrying her ‘quaint notebooks everywhere, recording each and everything when in the kitchen. When the pages of many such notebooks were filled, her husband encouraged her to publish them’. These became Cookery Craft and, later, 500 Easy Recipes. She calls ‘the countless hours spent... first and last a labour of love’.
The book was a huge success and was reprinted in 1965, 1966, 1979 and 1986 before it went out of print.
It did, indeed, become the go-to book for Konkani brides, in much the same way as The Joy of Cooking by Irma Rombauer or Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child, Louisette Bertholle and Simone Beck was for brides in the US. One of my friends, Jyoti Prabhu, recalls leaving Indian shores to join her doctor husband as a newly-married woman of 19. Her suitcase was full of her trousseau of glittering sarees, jewellery, slippers and this cookbook. ‘The sarees and jewellery were all put away in a cupboard, hardly ever to be used again, but the cookbook was utilised every single day, till I knew it all by heart. It fell apart when I photocopied it for the sixth time, for my daughter.’
My own introduction to authentic Konkani food was at the table of Nalini Karnad in Bombay in the 1970s. The lunch-time meal was created by her and her 99-year-old mother and herself, with ingredients bought fresh every day from the neighbourhood vegetable market.
Every meal, for me, was a journey of discovery. Of ingredients unknown, of exotic tastes and surprising textures. The lunch thali was dotted with all kinds of vegetarian preparations. Two types of lentils, four vegetables, chutneys, pickles, salads, rice, rotis, buttermilk and homemade curds were part of the daily meal.
Forty-odd years of sharing such meals have given me a fondness for the taste of Konkani food, a liking that led me to learn and reproduce the preparations at my own table for my family and in my blog on Indian food, The Cooks Cottage, which I began writing in 2004.
A few characteristics that struck me were the freshness and simplicity of the food. Then there was the use of all kinds of vegetables, some quite unknown to me at the time. Lastly, the fact that nothing was wasted. Every part of vegetable or fruit was used. Stalks, leaves, and peels were used to great effect in curries, chutneys, and pickles. In a country where many people do not have enough to eat, this resonated with me.
When Nayak wrote the book, the average housewife in India spent almost the whole day in the kitchen, cooking food from morning to night, for her husband and family. With an average of four to six children per household, large amounts were cooked. The day began with a cooked breakfast, carried on to a hot lunch and ended with a large dinner, interspersed with helpings of snacks and sweets as well. A meal, served on a thali or a banana leaf, consisted of a couple of vegetables, a lentil dish, a fried snack, two chutneys and a salad besides a sweet dish and buttermilk to wash it all down.
Ways of cooking and eating have changed today. Most people have time to cook just one or two main dishes and these must provide all the nutrients necessary for a healthy living. Besides changing from the old measures of tola and seers to grams and cups, I have rewritten most of the recipes to increase or decrease the amount where necessary, suggested substitutions if the main ingredient is not easily available, shortened the preparation time by using modern appliances, and given alternatives to those who do not have the time or energy to start from scratch.
The recipes were tested by me over a period of two years and then retested by my many Konkani friends, who gave insights into spicing and traditions and names in each corner of the region. Some were rigorously tested by my friends from the US, who were totally new to the cuisine, to check for ease of use, clarity, method and measures. One was vastly overqualified for the job, being an auditor of NASA reports.
The addition of red and green chillies in most recipes has been reduced as many recipes were overpoweringly pungent. They can, in fact, be made optional, so the flavour of the main ingredient comes through. I have added more popular meat and seafood recipes from the region as the original book had very few, surprisingly so, since seafood is available in abundance on the Konkan coast.
All these changes have been made with a view to making this cuisine more accessible and reproducible by interested cooks around the world. As with the original book, this has been a labour of love.