How Art Projects Are Encouraging The Revival Of Forgotten Recipes

How art projects are encouraging the revival of forgotten recipes and precious food traditions.

- Sneha Bhura

For about eight days in Panaji in December, a children's park became the site of a simulated tinto—a village marketplace where people once gathered to gozzale (gossip) and get their daily fix of vegetables, fish, haircuts, bread, letters and news. Going beyond fish curry and prawn balchão, this tinto also had wheat laddus from the cookhouses of Goud Saraswat Brahmins; manganey or a Goan version of kheer or sweetened rice porridge flecked with fenugreek; aambadey or hog plum chutney served with a local variation of dosa, a poor man's meal from a Goan Hindu kitchen.

“You see, during Lent, we even had veg pulao,” whispers Odette Mascarenhas, a food historian, critic, author, television host and longstanding curator of Food as ‘Art’ at the annual Serendipity Arts festival in Goa, the first major art event in India to start a dedicated 'culinary arts' segment.

Few brave-hearts would risk disdainful stares by suggesting vegetarian delicacies to eat while on a vacation in Goa. But an arts festival in the city brooks no such attitude or biases. The three-year-old Serendipity Arts Festival has consistently curated food experiences as the most accessible art form, including its collaboration in 2016 with an artists-led think-tank—Centre for Genomic Gastronomy—which got people to sign up for gustatory samplings of smog and tears.

“Food stimulates all our senses unlike other art forms,” says Mascarenhas, who has rejuvenated forgotten Goan community dishes and food stories through pop-ups, paintings and plays.