Dishing it out on the Net

When the world went into lockdown mode, Ragini Kashyap’s (@ thirdculturecooks) well-laid plans came to a grinding halt. When the world went into lockdown mode, Ragini Kashyap’s (@thirdculturecooks) welllaid plans came to a grinding halt.

An educational consultant who has lived and worked in various parts of the world, Kashyap was in Mumbai at the time. She loved food, and had a passion for history and different cultures, having lived in many countries. So she had come up with a unique supper club concept in 2016 while in London. She concentrated on “bordered menus” — focusing on food through geo-political conflicts.

Kashyap had set up similar supper clubs in Vancouver and Mumbai, focusing on different conflicts, including India’s with Pakistan and Tamils’ with Sinhalese in Sri Lanka, and organizing conversations and dishes for a three-hour-long, sixcourse meal. She had planned to work with food full time, quitting her job in February 2020 and renting a kitchen space.

“It all had to shut down once the pandemic started,” says Kashyap, who is currently based in Vancouver. Though not a big user of social media earlier, the pandemic shifted her focus.

When pandemonium broke out, social media was initially flooded with sourdough starters, homemade bread, glazed cakes, fermented drinks, and much more. But what shifted and became more common was the need to understand what we put inside our bodies. As people stayed more at home, conversations revolving around food changed, from superfluous reviews and commonplace recipes to more in-depth discussions — delving into regional dishes, urban terrace gardens, sustainability, origins, little-known aspects, the history of ingredients, migration of cuisines, and more.

A FOCUS ON HISTORY AND POLITICS Kashyap focused on Instagram but did not want to post recipes.

“Nor photos of what I am eating. One can find a recipe with a click of a button,” she says. So Kashyap began writing the history behind a particular dish.

“I realized I had a lot of food photos from my travels, but I had never shared them with the information that I had gathered,” she says.

Kashyap translated her passion for research and teaching to educate a follower, “telling you a little bit more”

about what we eat on social media. She showcased delectable spreads and fiery plates, dishes from Vietnam to Jordan, from the Mughal era to ancient Greece, the origins of chicken salad to uses of fenugreek in the ancient worlds to the global phenomenon of how the carrot cake came to be paired with Philadelphia cream cheese.

Each post on social media boasted a beautiful picture in a fun history lesson. She did several series on Instagram, focusing on a particular country, taking the reader through its food history, culture, people and establishments. Her Singapore series, posted earlier this year, was a delight — teaching about Kaya toast, hawker centers, and the famed Singapore Sling!

THE WAY TO A HEALTHY MIND... Chris Kurian (@forksongs), an academic and home chef based in New Delhi, began her food journey because she was fed up of her day jobs. “Cooking has stayed longer with me than any job,” she says.

Growing up in a Malayali family in India’s capital in the north of the country, she was appalled at having to justify her identity, which included food she ate, in a city she has lived in all her life.

“Delhi has diversity, but there’s a lack of imagination and accessibility in

Ragini Kashyap :

PHOTO CREDIT

Mansaf from Jordan, a popular dish eaten throughout the Levant Ragini Kashyap

and nutritional ways to use regional and seasonal food should be vegetables, the nuances of growing a fundamental food, local fermentation methods, how right?” Kurian to treat wet waste to use as compost, has an education and to come up with well-balanced and background plates of food. in political policy “Good food does not mean elaborate and a doctorate in feasts,” she says. understanding well-being. WILD AND EDIBLE City life, after a For Shruti Thariyal (@forgottengreens), point, suffocated nature had always been part of her, but her. As the she realized the potential of wild edible pandemic raged, greens found in everywhere later in life. Kurian packed up “I grew up in a city but when I began and moved to a village in Haryana to live a slow-paced lifestyle. “I can hear Organic vegetables from the Chris Kurian’s community garden again,” she says with a laugh. “It availability of food,” Kurian says. “It was extremely bothered me to hear people grouping important for me that what we are appam and stews, as if that is all people putting inside our bodies has a welleat in Kerala.” balanced relationship with mindfulness

She decided to educate through the and nature. I wanted to understand median she knew best — the food she the produce I am cooking with.” She has grown up with. frequently interacts with community

Kurian first set up a food stall at a farmers and growers, and draws handicrafts stall, serving unfamiliar upon their knowledge to further Tree spinach, tender pumpkin leaves, foods to a non-ethnic community. educate herself. Indian pennywort, butterfly pea flowers

“Everyone eats a fish moilee in On Instagram, Kurian makes it clear and toothache plant. Kerala, but they haven’t had a fish that it is eminently possible to grow red curry which locals eat at home,” one’s own food. Her posts and videos to travel to remote, interior parts of the she says. Kurian used social media to on social media are diverse — about country for non-profit work, I noticed draw attention to the authentic fare the inherent relationship between of diverse communities in Kerala nature and community,” Thariyal says. that she served. She included their She was interested in the politics of history and cultural background, food – how women, the key knowledge During the lockdown, she also holders, are barely recognized in the focused her attention on an urban food space, and understanding if the terrace garden to produce organic food consumed today was actually a vegetables of the highest quality. part of the traditional ecosystem.

“It is an abomination that we “I asked simple questions,” have to depend so much on a Thariyal says. “What plants did my market, even for the simplest of grandparents eat? Are they available things, like yogurt, which we earlier now? I spent time documenting used to make at home,” Kurian knowledge from women farmers. I says. “Why is there no emphasis plucked random leaves I found, asking on eating seasonal foods? Why locals what they knew about it.” is organic produce priced and When Thariyal comes across a positioned for the elite when healthy Shruti Thariyal wild plant that catches her eye, she

immensely researches its history, local names, mentions of it in social media, and so forth. She then cultivates knowledge by talking to local elders and foragers who might be able to answer her questions. In 2018, Thariyal began sharing her knowledge about edible wild greens that grew in abundance but whose taste was not known to the general public. After the first lockdown began, she noticed a boost in interest. “People were noticing what was growing around them more,” Thariyal says. “I was getting a ton of messages with pictures, asking ‘What is this?’ ‘Are they edible?’ ‘How do you eat this plant?’ ‘What are its health benefits?’ and more.”

So, the wild weeds and greens expert forager started an online program to highlight a particular edible plant/ weed, how to forage for them and use them in one’s diet. She soon realized, the program focused too much on consumerism.

“The perspective needed to shift from just the edible/non-edible question to how to look at these wild greens in a more holistic manner,” she says. From her everexpanding knowledge, Thariyal began to explain the medicinal and health benefits of these wild edible plants. She emphasized the need to retrieve the forgotten knowledge of local ingredients, to ask why we are eating this. In a recent post, she puts forth her conundrum rather eloquently for her followers: “We have reached a point where what is local is now exotic, and what grows in Brazil/ Mexico is considered local and is also easily available. Each culture has a gastronomically rich food system which in the wake of globalization and colonization is getting homogenized.”

FOCUS ON REGIONS Sandeepa Mukherjee Datta (@ bongmom_cookbook), has been

Sandeepa Mukherjee Datta

blogging for almost 14 years. The New Jersey based-engineer started to document food she grew up on with a simple goal — to pass on the legacy of Bengali food to her daughters in a land far from their ancestral one.

Datta relied on simple regional Bengali food and techniques she had learned from her mother, grandmother, mother-in-law, and the multitude of aunts and grandmothers who had fed her for years in India. Datta’s first book was based on recipes from her blog. She recently published her debut novel based on food, “Those Delicious Letters.” “I love reading food fiction and wanted to read one set in the backdrop of the Indian diaspora,” Datta says. “But I didn’t find anything and so I wrote something I would love to read.”

Datta’s Instagram is filled with delicious photographs — ranging from kid-friendly, easy-peasy dishes with canned beans, to techniques used in Bengali cuisine albeit with a twist, like bhaapa (steaming) using fresh paneer instead of fish. Each write-up makes one’s mouth water. For Bengalis who live outside the region, or anyone keen on learning about the regional variants of foods in Bengal, Datta breaks down recipes in an easy-to-follow, mostly healthy, manner. During the pandemic, her food posts on Instagram became more regular. “I do not cook or plan social media posts, nor do I think about SEO or web traffic,” Datta says. “The blog was a hobby, then a passion. Social media were more for allowing me to connect with my readers and have a community feeling.”

FINDING A PATH Kashyap, Kurian, Datta and Thariyal all share a common experience — during the pandemic, they were able to connect with like-minded people through social media.

“I started cooking classes, taught about food and politics, and wrote a book to raise money,” says Kashyap. “Through it all, I found making personal connections on social media that grew over time with consistency.” She will soon be launching two podcasts – one focusing on spices, and the other about the stories of migrants who came to, or left, South Asia over centuries. Her Instagram planning is short-term and flexible, and she still has plenty in the pipeline in the coming months. Kurian, most whose followers are women, says she found “her tribe” on social media. “The reception has been encouraging,” she says. “I firmly believe in authenticity, not algorithms.”

Yet, through social media, she has discovered a vast group of women gardeners in urban cities where space is limited. Thariyal is planning a tour in South India to document lore, names, and recipes of hyperlocal wild greens. Based on requests, she plans to teach about local plants used to alleviate stress and anxiety, help during a menstrual cycle, etc. Datta found that she provided succor to her followers. “Readers said that the virtual community of my blog helped them cope with the pandemic. That we were all in it together.” The pandemic has been hard on everyone, but it has also started a movement on social media — providing a deep dive into understanding what we eat, and helping us reimagine our relationship with food. And that shows no signs of slowing down.