A few weeks ago, in the leafy folds of Safdarjung Enclave, I found myself at a supper club that made me think of those maroon diaries again. It did not belong to any single region’s cuisine. Instead, it drew from the personal archive of Mr Khaitan, a man who cooks through his travels and feeds his family on recipes that roam easily between India and the world. His daughter, Sreeparna Khaitan, and Surbhi Anand have now gathered these recipes into a book called Bapu’s Curries. The supper was hosted in their cosy home, the sort of space where the smell of caramelising onions can wander into the living room and join in on the conversation.
We ate Hara Chana Nimona masquerading as a chaat, an onion broth with mushroom melange that nodded politely towards Japan, and Dal ke fulaure with coconut cream sauce and panta bhaat. There was shalgam gogji with potato and green bean pickle from Benaras served alongside dhuska from Jharkhand. It was quietly disarming food. Supple with memory but never weighed down by it. The Khaitan sisters cooked as if they were letting us leaf through the pages of their own family album. Between dishes you could sense the presence of their father in the way the flavours lingered and refused to be hurried.
It struck me that recipe preservation is not always about glossy coffee-table books or museum-style archiving. Sometimes it is about family ritual and the wish to keep flavours moving forward rather than locked away. By compiling Bapu’s Curries and hosting these intimate pop-ups, the sisters have allowed Delhi to encounter dishes that once lived only in their kitchen. Dishes gathered from hotel buffets, holiday kitchens and market stalls, and then made permanent in the rhythms of home.
Dining and Cooking