Sweet Beginnings
Every weekend a Colaba family opens their home to foodies for a taste of Bohri cuisine and traditions.
Filled with colourful chutneys and salads, a Bohri thaal is the centrepiece of festive meals. (Source: Ganesh Shirsekar)The first item to circulate among the group of foodies, who had gathered to sample traditional Bohri cuisine on a Sunday afternoon, was a bowl of karamra. Bohris often begin their meal with this humble mix of rice, curd and sugar, topped with a handful of dry fruits. For them, every meal has a sweet beginning. It can vary from a scoop of ice-cream to a traditional dish called sodanna (cooked rice sprinkled with sugar and ghee).
Sweets are called “mithaas” and savoury dishes are called “kharaas” and the meal alternates between these two. Unfortunately, the only way one can experience this cuisine is if you have Bohri friends who invite you for a meal at home or to weddings in their community. However, The Bohri Kitchen (TBK), an experimental home-based project by the Kapadias, is making the cuisine accessible through their weekend lunches.
In the family’s sprawling Colaba apartment, 55-year-old Nafisa Kapadia is busy frying mutton keema samosas in her kitchen. As the scent of curries waft through the living room, a round of mint-ginger lemon tea is served to whet our appetite. The Bohris are great believers in the concept of community dining. Kapadia’s son, Munaf sets down a safra, a square cloth on which a thaal is placed. The Bohri thaal — a metal plate large enough to feed eight to 20 people — is often the centrepiece of festive meals. Various colourful chutneys, salads, samosas, pineapple raita with walnuts and karamra, for second helpings make it to the thaal.
“Karamra was the Prophet’s favourite meal and we prepare this dish during Id-e-Milad and on Thursdays, which is auspicious for us,” says Nafisa, who uses recipes handed down by her mother-in-law. Before filling us in on other family stories, she urges us to start the meal with a pinch of salt, a practice followed in Bohri homes to activate the taste buds.
Munaf’s grandfather, Yusufali Heptullabhai Kapadia, moved to Bombay from Rajkot with just Rs 150 — the amount his younger sister had saved over many years. “The Bohri sense of business took over and he started buying things such as pins, combs and other utility items and sold them for a small profit,” says Munaf. Later, he set up a steel cutlery manufacturing unit that turned the family’s fortune around. The Bohri Kitchen, which took shape two months ago, was born out of Munaf’s enterprising streak and Nafisa’s excellent cooking skills. “My colleagues love my mother’s cooking. So I thought of showcasing the community’s culinary heritage through TBK,” he adds.
What makes Bohri food so special? According to Nafisa, the trick lies in slow-cooking. “Most of the dishes are slow-cooked to allow the meat to soak in the flavour of the spices. A lot of the curries in Bohri cuisine are made with fried onions and curd. The other important ingredients are coconut and kokum,” she says, as we tuck into the chicken gosht served with traditional Bohri bread called sirmal. For this dish, juicy pieces of chicken are cooked in a gravy along with chunks of fried potatoes and boiled eggs.
The highlight of the meal, however, was the mutton undhiyu. This has winter vegetables such as french beans, peas, sweet potatoes and cluster beans cooked with delicious mutton in an onion and tomato gravy. “Muthiyas made of jowar atta and green garlic are also added to the gravy,” says Nafisa. While, the dish tastes very different from its vegetarian version, it packs in all the flavours of the season. Another secret to the delectable food is quality ingredients. Kapadia senior scours through Colaba’s choicest meat sellers to
find the right kind of cut and spices.
We finished our meal with sheer khurma that was generously garnished with dry fruits and served piping hot. This was followed by meetha paan. On that note, we asked the Kapadias if they aspire to open a restaurant. “Yes”, they say unanimously. “Right now we are looking at holding a more premium version of TBK lunches. Our long-term plan is to find partners to set up a restaurant,” adds Munaf.
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