WRAPPED MEMORIES

Crescentia Scolt Fernandes brought homestyle Goan cooking to Delhi two decades ago. Tale of Two Kitchens is her part memoir, part culinary archive, that traces her layered food heritage. It is less a manual than a memory map of food that deserves to be remembered.

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The second is Poffertjes, a shallow, pancake-like cousin of the paniyaram. "We had just one pan that went around between families," she recalls.

"Some of my younger cousins don't even remember what it is." Easy to make, yet rarely made anymore, it represents the quiet erosion of food traditions-not through resistance, but neglect.

A mixed kitchen

Fernandes' relationship with food was shaped less by rigid tradition and more by curiosity. Her mother, progressive for her time, experimented widely-learning recipes from British magazines, Muslim neighbours, club kitchens and visiting foreigners. "We didn't have 'typical' food at home," Fernandes says. "It was always mixed."