Plating Yesterday Today

This Shantiniketan couple is tracing the subcontinent's displaced kitchens—one heirloom recipe at a time

- TANISHA SAXENA

colleges, but it didn't work out. So she began tending to the land, growing food, and making pickles.

That modest act of pickling, sparked something bigger. Their first pop-up, held in Mumbai in 2021, was unplanned. "I just started making pickles," Bhattacharya shrugs. But with encouragement from their son indentured labour—scattered people across geographies. And how food travelled with them," Sen explains.

For instance, in Mahishadal, a small town in East Midnapore, they uncovered the story of 16th-century Portuguese mercenaries who settled and intermarried with locals. "They formed a unique micro-community," says Sen. "Their vindaloo, for example, is nothing like the Goan version—it's its own thing entirely."