Over February and March 2009, six Friends of Kolkata volunteers led by two intrepid Friends of Kolkata volunteer leaders journeyed to Kolkata to participate in six weeks of community development work with past and present partner organisations. Equipped with a wide variety of skills and interests, the volunteers took part in diverse projects – from surveying the women’s shelter site to making didgeridoos and from painting banners of future dreams to running photography workshops.

Here, in the first of a series of stories that account their adventures, is the narrative of a scrumptious cooking project. 

Cooking in Kolkata

Pots and pans, pressure cookers and paneer pakoras. My project involved all of these things, as well as collage-making and berry-pickling, recipe-typing and story-sharing, vegetable-chopping and kitchen-feasting. Mine was a cooking project in which, through various activities, outings and cook-ups, I collected recipes and documented cooking processes with the girls and women of the Institute of Social Work, Friends of Kolkata’s partner organisation.

With the high school and college girls at Kidderpore, in the heart of Kolkata city, we played Bengali and English food vocabulary games in the afternoon sunshine on the roof, we typed recipes the girls had collected from home on donated laptops, and we pulled out bright textas and shiny coloured paper to make food-related collages and drawings. After much discussion (words flying between vibrantly scarfed heads, across patiently crossed legs), two recipes were chosen by the girls to cook. Chicken Pakora and Pea and Paneer curry would join that well-known Australian recipe, “Rum Balls”, on the menu for the last day’s feast. A few of the girls led the bargaining at Kolkata’s New Market to buy all the fresh peas, potatoes, onions, chillies, meat and spices that were needed. Then, sleeves pulled up, hands ready to chop and stir, roll and crush, a feast was prepared and later enjoyed by everyone at Kidderpore. It was delicious, delightful. Many wonderful pictures had been drawn, many recipes collected, and much fun had.

After Kidderpore, the kitchen at Barasat, a town on the rural outskirts of Kolkata, became the hub of activity for my project. Together with women completing a vocational training course that included food hygiene and nutritional elements, I learnt from an amazing cook (and Kolkata television chef!), chopping piles of cauliflower, slicing bowls of onions and pulping bags of tomatoes to create various traditional West Bengal recipes. Helping and observing in the kitchen, I learnt about the many aspects of ISW’s current food production programs including the bakery, the jam- and pickle-making, and the spice-grinding. Moreover, I learnt that food production was where ISW began way back in 1979. ISW founder Nupur, then in her early 20s, invited a group of just seven women from the Kidderpore slums into her kitchen to cook up big pots of guava jelly so the women “will get the wages, proper wages”. I left Barasat with an enriched stack of recipes, beautiful photos of the women learning and creating in the kitchen, and a deeper appreciation of the reach and impact of ISW.

Now, back in Australia, a new process begins in which I will collate the recipes, photographs and experiences gathered in Kolkata into a cook book. The wished-for purposes of this cook book are many: to share delicious recipes, to demonstrate the varied food traditions of Kolkata, to showcase the incredible work of ISW, to communicate the experience of the girls and women with whom ISW work, and to help raise funds for FoK, and through FoK, for ISW. So look out for an FoK-ISW cook book, coming SOON to a book shelf near you!

Meredith Moodie