Four Trends That Will Shape Our Food Future

Every crisis comes with seeds of opportunity. In the new normal, that opportunity lies firmly within the home. Instead of dining out, attention is now firmly fixed on dining in. As more metropolitan Indians take up cooking, the comforting but complex recipes of our past, rooted in cultures of our families and regions, may be winning over soulless derivative dining.

- Anoothi Vishal

REDISCOVERING THE JOY OF HOMELY DISHES

While some relied on Maggi and packaged pasta dinners, a tidal wave of experimentation in regional and community-specific recipes seems to have swept into many home kitchens. Social media is full of pictures of homely, often overlooked, dishes such as lau chingri (bottle gourd cooked with shrimps), Manglorean pineapple menaskai, Old Delhi’s bedmi aloo, Nepali chutney, Parsi fish curry, sookhi urad of western UP, DIY paani puris and “pressure-cooker” cakes. Nostalgia and wholesomeness score over aspirational Instagrammable food. As art curator Bhavna Kakkar says, “I have been cooking everything from beetroot kadhi to mango curry, tasty bhi, healthy bhi”.