On community cookbooks and the joy of a good salad

It’s a warm February afternoon in Bengaluru and Nia Thandapani and I are in her kitchen, looking through her high school recipe scrapbook. A master scrapbook made up of cutouts from other scrapbooks, to be precise.

“I had so many scrapbooks, and at one point, I decided to make a master book taking out the best of the recipes from the others. When I got rid of the other scrapbooks taking up space in my parents’ house, I took out all the recipes that I remembered cooking and loved,” she says, flipping through to find a much-loved strudel recipe. This avid scrapbook maker now designs and makes books for a living.

A New Beginning

It has been a couple of weeks since the Thandapanis moved into their new home. Trees surround the apartment, filling the home with dappled light in the afternoons. The kitchen, with its ink-blue cabinetry and stone countertop, is designed as an extension of the living space. At the centre is a cocoon, or ‘the pod’ as Nia calls it. This space turns the kitchen into the belly of the home. It’s where her toddler daughter plays after school, and where guests spend the night. Surrounding this cosy niche are shelves holding kitchenly things — a hand-cranked pasta maker, an enamel stockpot — amid Nia’s extensive cookbook collection.

A Life in Books

Nia’s love for books started early. The first cookbook she owned, Dorling Kindersley’s Children’s Step-By-Step Cookbook, had a recipe for potato and cheese bake that she can still make from memory, over 30 years later. Her collection has significantly grown since then, and includes many community cookbooks, her particular interest. “I love the idea that everybody comes together and contributes their recipes,” she says, “not expecting anything in return except whatever they’re raising money for.”

A Fridge Forage

Meals in the Thandapani household also include plenty of salads. A broccoli salad with feta and almonds is a favourite. Their fridge is accordingly a palette of various shades of green. There is fresh dosa batter and homemade curd. A well-stocked condiment section catches my eye; smoky Dijon mustard, a jar of kimchi, capers in brine, some harissa and a cheese box. Like any family whose love language is food, the fridge also holds gifts from their families: homemade jams from Nia’s mother and freshly-ground masalas from Selvan’s.

Every fridge holds its secrets; ingredients that are stashed away with the best of intentions, but never make it out before they are well past their prime. It’s the unusual vegetables and pomegranate molasses that tend to suffer this fate at the Thandapani's. “There would’ve been one recipe using the ingredient that I thought would be nice to try. But it's not actually something we cook with every day.”

The first thing that Selvan and Nia made in their new kitchen was bruschetta. Selvan runs one of the most popular bakeries in Bengaluru, Sour House. As you can imagine, their toast game is strong.