Press and Accolades

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It’s All About Exclusivity And Experience Quotient

A leading trend in tracing food history and culture is the new format of social tables planned annually by Tanushree Bhowmik under the banner of ‘ForkTales’. It has helped her curate food pop-ups by sharing myths, legends and food lore from the sub-continent, bringing strangers together over food at destinations like Jorhat in Assam or even Bengaluru.

Nizamuddin’s stories of change

In June 2018, they did their first pop-up with Tanushree Bhowmik, a Delhi-based development professional who documents and revives old recipes through her pop-up Fork Tales. While the women would earlier pander to popular tastes and cook biryani and kebabs, Bhowmik and Jyotsna Lall, director, programmes, AKTC, encouraged them to draw on the seasonal heirloom recipes of their families and make home-style food. Some of their popular dishes include lauki ka kofta,nihari, urad bathua, hari mirch keema and chawal ki roti.

Food Lore from the Sub-Continent

One of the leading trends of tracing food history and culture resonates well with the new format of social tables. One such social table – ‘ForkTales’ – curates food pop-ups by sharing myths, legends and food lore from the sub-continent. It brings strangers together over food and passes on food heirlooms and culture through social interaction. Tanushree Bhowmik and her husband Om Routray convey the lesser known Indian food traditions through a series of pop-up events.

These food pop-ups offer bites of history from colonial, pre-Partition India

Delhi-based food researcher Tanushree Bhowmik, who works in the development sector, curates a Planter’s Lunch at a heritage tea plantation in Jorhat, Assam, that explores the rarely discussed link between Anglo-Indian and Assamese food.

Indian micro-cuisines and where to find them

A few years ago, when Tanushree Bhowmik’s 96-year-old grandmother gave her a book of handwritten recipes from Assam’s plantations and clubs, she knew she had something special.

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Whose rice is it anyway?

“One scholar mentions the presence of as many as 119 varieties of rice in the 24 Parganas alone,” says Tanushree Bhowmik, a development professional and home cook who documents and showcases old recipes through her pop-up ForkTales.

Super seeds

Pumpkin seeds form an inextricable part of Tanushree Bhowmik’s childhood memories. While growing up in Assam, the favourite summer pastime for all the cousins was to collect seeds from ripe fleshy pumpkins. “We would keep count of who got how many,” says Bhowmik, now a Delhi-based development professional who documents and revives old recipes through her pop-up ForkTales.

Move over gouda & parmesan! Indian cheese like chhurpi, kalari have unique tastes and tales to tell

According to Tanushree Bhowmik, a Delhi-based development professional who documents and revives old recipes through the pop-up Fork Tales, Bandel, located 50 km from Kolkata, became a Portuguese stronghold in 1599 when a church was constructed there. Although the Portuguese failed to consolidate their hold over Bengal, they left their traces behind in the Bandel cheese. “Originally it was made by the Mog or Burmese cooks under Portuguese supervision,” says Bhowmik.

Forget spaghetti, try saravle, thenthuk, chushi – the Indian pastas

“Originally from erstwhile east Bengal, the chushi is made from rice flour and sundried. As is the jhinuk pitha, which resembles a lotus shell pasta and is often served with curries or with thickened milk,” says Tanushree Bhowmik.

Eat under the moon

“If you look closely, festivals on the full moon are about bounty and surplus. But the new moon is always about austerity. The way we look at life is reflected in the food,” says Tanushree Bhowmik, a Delhi-based development professional, who documents and revives old recipes through her pop-up ForkTales.

The Bengali ‘makha’ is a culinary technique and comfort food

For Delhi-based professional Tanushree Bhowmik, known for her pop-up Fork Tales, the very word makha evokes memories of long-ago early winter afternoons spent with her grandfather at her Digboi home and his delicious jambura (pomelo) makha. “My grandfather would macerate the jambura with salt, sugar, a hint of chillies and a dash of mustard oil and let it rest for a while,” says Bhowmik.