Despite their dwindling population, the Parsis strive to preserve the legacy of their rich, robust and wholesome cuisine by even using social media to popularise it among food lovers around the world.“Rich, pure, wholesome, rustic and robust. That’s Parsi cuisine to me. It is unique. It’s spicy, sweet and sour. It’s robust and elegant. It’s complex yet simple. One thing it isn’t, it’s not a quick bite. It’s food you sit down and enjoy,” Urvaksh Hoyvoy, who runs the ‘Parsi da Dhabha’.
He says opening the restaurant in 2009 on NH-8 en-route from Mumbai to Ahmedabad, about 150 km from here, was his way of trying to preserve the legacy of their food.
“Whenever I travel, I take my Parsi spices and cook in people’s homes. One such event happened in a country home in a tiny town of Bartelsville in Oklahoma,” he says.
“And we are beginning to use the social media to share our delicious legacy with the world,” he says.
Farzana Contractor, the editor and publisher of food and travel magazine UpperCrust, says, “I know people outside the community yearn to be invited for a ‘Lagan nu Bhonu’, because outside a Parsi home that is the only place they can get to eat this food, since there just aren’t too many places you can go eating out.”
“Like I, for example, land up at Ideal Corner at Fort whenever the urge to eat bhonu overcomes me. Though surprisingly even the Yacht Club (Royal Bombay Yacht Club) does a decent ‘Dhansak’ and they serve it with tiny pieces of plain fried Bombay Duck,” she says.
“As an ‘honorary’ Parsi and being married to a foodie as big as Behram Contractor aka Busybee (noted journalist and founder-editor of Afternoon newspaper), I can say I do love the Parsi cuisine immensely. “Alas, I don’t see much happening by way of preserving the food legacy. Authenticity is of course maintained quite simple because it is still home cooked and recipes there don’t change,” she says.
Anahita N Dhondy, the chef manager at SodaBottleOpenerWala which has seven outlets in India, says with their community population falling and their number being only 69,000 in India they are trying their best to preserve their culture and food.
“We made Parsi food cool and popularised the Bombay Irani cafe concept,” she says.
Anahita N Dhondy, the chef manager at SodaBottleOpenerWala,says Parsi cuisine can be counted as the oldest ‘fusion cuisine’ as it brings together the flavours of Persia with the masalas and freshness of Gujarat, Maharashtra and Goa. (olivebarandkitchen.com)
According to Dhondy, Parsi cuisine can be counted as the oldest ‘fusion cuisine’ as it brings together the flavours of Persia with the masalas and freshness of Gujarat, Maharashtra and Goa.
“It also uses techniques from British cookery. So it’s a beautiful amalgamation of all these cuisines. Some recipes are easy and some very lengthy with complicated processes.
“The ingredients would range from dry fruits to coconut, famous sambhar masala and dhana jeeru masala, curry masalas, pickles, souffles and sandwiches. It’s a vast range of cookery. It’s got vegetables, eggs, fish, meat and sweet preparations,” she says.
According to Urvaksh, the Parsis left their homeland because they immensely valued their beliefs and their faith was unwavering.
“The way we Parsis prepare and eat our food today is not how Parsi people ate in Persia. There’s a whole lot of ‘India’ in the cooking pot now.
“In Persia, spices were scarce, so the food was cooked simply. When we arrived on the shores of Gujarat to take refuge, we assimilated in the best possible way – the food way,” he says.
Parsi recipes then travelled the beaches of Gujarat, up north India, then to the west of India, east India and south India, through the bylanes of Mumbai’s Dhobhi Talao, Byculla, Colaba, acquiring technique and adding new flavours to the food.
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