Editor's Pick: Your Year-End Reading List
As we say goodbye to another eventful year, here are some of the most read and shared essays from Goya’s archives this year. The essays range from a profile of a prolific 50s food writer to a feature on a lesser-known Maharashtrian dish, and its complicated history, to a personal story about friendship, a moringa tree aand putting down roots along new frontiers.
1. Eid Cakes are the Ultimate Dinner Present in Pakistan
“This is the curse of living on the same street as three upscale bakeries, because Eid means buying cake, and Karachi’s residents can turn even something like cake into a form of organised chaos.” Saba Imtiaz looks at Pakistan’s tradition of gifting Eid cakes, what it signifies, and how that has changed over the years. Read full story.
2. How a 50s Food Writer Championed Kerala's Cuisine, One Column at a Time
Mrs KM Mathew captured a collective culinary memory with food that had remained confined to Kerala’s regionally distinct kitchens: sticky, sweet jackfruit ada, prawn pappas, beef pattichu varathathu. Nikhita Venugopal profiles this prolific author, and simultaneously maps how women’s magazines and periodicals changed the way that Indian recipes and culinary traditions were passed on. Read full story.
3. Reclaiming Space & Identity with Chaha-Chapati
Hot chapati dunked into a cup of sweet, milky tea is a breakfast many Maharashtrians have grown up eating. And yet, when mapping the culinary landscape of the state, this is a dish that falls through the cracks. Pradnya Waghule explores the complicated history of chaha-chapati. Read.
4. Lamprais: An Insight into the Burghers of Sri Lanka
Lamprais is a Sri Lankan meal, a marriage of multiple elements - samba rice, brinjal and meat curries, seeni sambol, fried ash plantain and blachan - steamed and packed in a banana leaf. Lamprais recipes have typically been a Burgher family tradition. Nikhita Panwar explores its strong, yet gradually wavering legacy. Read.
5. Panni Erachi Curry on the Eve of Vishu
The revival of cooking of pork curry on the eve of Vishu — an Ezhava tradition — is one that was nearly wiped out in the process of Sanskritisation, writes Shruti Tharayil. Read.
6. Of Shutki, Ngari and Karuvadu: The Ubiquity and Invisibility of ‘Poor Man’s Fish’ in India
Dried fish — whether it is shutki in Bengal, karati/bordia/lashim in Assam, sukhua in Odisha, endu chepalu in Andhra, karuvadu in Kerala and Tamil Nadu, or sukat macchi in Maharashtra — remains on the margins of the culinary narrative of the country. Through the example of preserved fish, Sohel Sarkar explores the ‘social hierarchy of taste’ and the ways it plays out in communities. Read.
7. Love, Friendship & Muringakaya: A Story of Migration
Moringa has traveled well beyond the Indian subcontinent and forged a new identity, finding its way into new recipes and uses. Rekha Warrier finds that in the era of climate change, as plants and people find themselves moving and putting down roots along new frontiers, hybrid cultures and cuisines emerge. Read.
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