From My Grandmother’s Hands – a recipe book from 1986

TEXT BY AASTHA GUPTA
WITH INPUTS FROM ANJU GUPTA, SIMMI NANDA AND SANGEETA MEHTA
PHOTOGRAPHS BY AANCHAL MALHOTRA
Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India

A cookbook that dates back to the year 1986 is filled with my maternal grandmother, my naani’s handwritten recipes. I learnt about it only last year, though, because my mother was aware of my interest in writing about old objects and materials. This diary was my grandmother’s companion throughout her life, but after she died in 2023, it became dearer to my mother. Now, in the age of ordering in and eating out, this diary has found new relevance amongst my mother and her sisters once again.

I think a notebook of recipes was a prized possession for women of my grandmother’s generation because the magic really lay in their hands. They used their hands to write down the recipes, chop vegetables and to feed themselves and their families. Nowadays, of course, we don’t write, we type. We don’t chop, we use grinders, and we rarely use our hands to feed ourselves. Maybe that’s why food prepared by hand, in the same way that our mothers and grandmothers made it, feels like an inheritance.

My naani, Bimla Nanda, was from Gujranwala district in Pakistan. She was five years old when her family migrated to India after the Partition. They moved to Agra in the then-United Provinces, and then Atari in Punjab, before finally settling in the area around Karol Bagh in Delhi. When she got married many years later in 1960, she moved to Faridabad and lived there with her husband and four daughters for a large part of her married life.

While I don’t have any memories of my grandmother using the diary in front of me since I was quite young, what I do remember is how my grandparents’ home in Faridabad was thoughtfully and practically built. The kitchen had an open window to the dining area. So my cousins and I, as kids, could see and talk to our naani in the kitchen, and felt connected to the entire cooking process. This was an intimate setting that many present-day houses lack. I have vivid memories of her serving us the best of squashes (as they were called back then) whenever we used to visit her in the summer. The recipes for those drinks, including Aam-panna and Gulab sharbat, have trickled down to our generation too. Writing this piece also served as an excuse to rediscover and cook some of the old recipes in this notebook, like the snack, Canton Crunchy.

RECIPE OF CANTON CRUNCHY (Originally written in Hindi)
Ingredients:

• ½ kg potatoes
• 6 slices of bread
• 1 finely chopped onion
• 1 finely chopped capsicum
• Salt, red pepper
• ½ small spoon Ajinomoto
• 3 big spoons Cornflour or maida
• Egg white (if required)
• ½ capsicum- for garnishing
• Ghee for frying
  
  Recipe:
• Boil the potatoes and peel them
• Mix chopped onion, salt, red pepper, Ajinomoto, chopped capsicum, cornflour and egg white with the peeled potatoes
• Cut out circles of 2” from each slice of bread. Spread the above mixture on each bread and add chopped capsicums on the top for a finished look.
• Take a frying pan and fry them until they acquire a golden color.

From my aunts, I learnt that my grandmother used to get these recipes from her close-knit circle of friends in Faridabad. The recipes itself are written in a mix of English and Hindi – those written purely in Hindi are by naani herself, and the others are by my two aunts, as my naani dictated them. After my elder aunt got married and moved to Nagpur, the younger one took over. Sometimes, my aunts would watch as naani cooked, and noted down the ingredients and process simultaneously.

The diary is black in colour and has a leather texture. Due to the passage of years, it has worn out, and the pages have turned a yellow-ish brown. A generous amount of tape secures the spine of the book. The diary measures around 12×10 inches, and the recipes are mostly written in blue ink that has bled through the page, because of the age of the diary and thinness of paper. There are little notes under some recipes, indicating that these were written quiet meticulously and perhaps tweaked or edited during the process of cooking.

Interestingly, the first few pages have things like postal information (cost of sending envelopes, money orders, airmail charges, etc.), STD codes of different cities, and a table of daily wages. All this information pertains to the year 1986. The first actual recipe in the diary is of vanilla ice cream, followed by strawberry and chocolate. In fact, there are as many as 15 different flavours of ice cream that I counted throughout the diary, from pista, orange delite, apple to, of course, our favourite as kids, tutti-fruity.

A desert that caught my attention purely for its name is ‘Dil-e-Firdaus’, made with milk, rice, sugar, and khoya (or reduced milk). When I googled, I found out that the name is actually Gil-e-Firdaus and is a famous Hyderabadi dessert. While the original recipe involves bottle gourd or Lauki, the recipe mentioned in the diary doesn’t talk about it at all, although all the other ingredients are the same. A few pages down from Dil-e-Firdaus, under the Baking and Pudding section, we can also find the recipe for the famous BourBon biscuits.

RECIPE OF BOURBON BISCUITS
Ingredients:

• 4 oz maida (115 gm)
• 2 oz soft butter (55 gm)
• 2 oz powdered sugar (55 gm)
• ½ tsp vanilla essence
• 1 tbsp milk
• ½ oz cocoa
• ½ tsp baking powder

Method:

• Sieve flour, cocoa and baking powder, cream butter and sugar very well until light creamy mix is formed.
• Add vanilla essence and golden syrup.
• Add flour mixture and mix well.
• Roll a small portion of dough and sprinkle granulated sugar over the rolled dough.
• Stamp out biscuits with a biscuit cutter. Prick with a fork all over the biscuit.
• Put the biscuits on a well-greased tray.
• Bake in moderate temperature in an oven for 10-15 minutes.
• Cool biscuits and sandwich with butter icing.

Recipe for Butter icing: Cream 2 oz soft butter until soft and white. Do not warm. Add 3 oz sieved icing sugar. Add ¾ tbsp chocolate powder, 1 tbsp cocoa and few drops of vanilla essence

A separate sheet of paper placed inside the book boasts of recipes of a variety of pickles, like mixed vegetable, lemon and green chilli. The one pickle beloved by all my aunts is a mixture of carrot, cauliflower and turnip, and it’s my sister’s and my favourite as well! It has a sweet and sour flavour, which immediately lifts the taste of any food you eat it with, and is a staple during the Delhi winter.

Another famous recipe that has passed down to everyone in the family, including me, is of fruit cream. This was not a common desert in my marital home, until I began making it. So, on the days that I really miss my naani, I prepare fruit cream and reminisce my childhood with her. It’s a simple recipe that does not demand much – just seasonal summer fruits like mangoes, apples and grapes, sugar, and fresh Amul cream.

What amazes me is the detail with which each recipe is written, and even the different sections and courses have been given thought. For instance, she has a separate category for “Ordinary” snacks (Spicy tomato sandwich and Curd cheese sandwich), which probably means snacks meant for the day-to-day, and not for guests or special occasions.

I admit that we are a generation spoilt for choice – today, you simply name a dish and you can get it, no matter where you are in the world. However, the reason this diary remains precious is that every recipe within it has stood the test of time for nearly four decades. It has absorbed the tastes of various generations, encompassed dishes from around the world, and made them unique to a single family and their kitchen. In a way, I am happy that this diary exists. It has no anecdotes or feelings that would leave you with a swollen heart, but it does preserve the fact that food can win over the heart, and the memory of that food can carry through generations.