By Andrea Blum ( @myamericanpantry ), Montalvo Culinary Artist
Above: Shirisha Gopisetti cooking in the kitchen of Montalvo’s Lucas Artists Program.
Some of my best kitchen memories are from cooking with women in home kitchens around the world. I am especially excited when some of these worldly women (and men) come to the culinary kitchen at the Lucas Artists Program and share their life stories and food. The kitchen here is a magnet, and I can travel through those who come here to visit. On Friday, Shirisha Gopisetti, a volunteer in the Montalvo gardens, came with her daughter Manasi to help make the artists’ lunch. We planned a vegan Indian menu together, celebrating the food her mother and grandmother cooked for her, growing up in southern India. The food was a typical home-style Telangana/Andhra vegetarian meal. The mixed vegetable dish we made was for the Dasara festival, which is part of the nine-day celebration of Navarati.
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Above: Dinner guests included Lucas Artist Fellows and Montalvo staff members.
It was delightful to have these two women join me in the kitchen to share their recipes. Twenty people gathered around the picnic tables in the LAP patio, including the ten current artist residents, Montalvo staff (including Ann Northrop, Montalvo’s gardener, who cares for the LAP’s culinary garden that is tucked between the two composers’ studios.)
Siri (as Shirisha is nicknamed), brought a bit of Indian history and flavor to the kitchen. S he told stories of growing up with a father who was an electrical engineer and a freedom fighter for the Indian independence movement. Gandhi, then newly elected, influenced her father to become a more peaceful warrior. Siri’s father believed in educating every girl and instilled in his girls independence and the importance of being financially self-sufficient, which Siri said was a rarity in those days. For some families at that time, having girls was considered a burden because, upon marriage, the bride’s family was required to provide a dowry. Education was everything for her family and the girls were treated as equal or even better than the boys. Siri’s father believed that strong and independent women made a society and a country strong.
Above: Shirisha Gopisetti (right) and her daughter Manasi (left).
All the daughters in Siri’s family ended up as either engineers or doctors. And now, her daughter is the first aspiring artist of the family. We cooked together for hours and shared stories. I also learned a lot from her and her home style of cooking southern Indian food, one of my favorite cuisines.
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Here is what we served:
A salad of cucumber, mung bean sprouts, coconut and roasted cumin powder.
Green beans with fresh coconut, urad dal, turmeric and mustard seeds.
Cauliflower, potatoes and peas with cilantro, green chilis, ginger and coconut.
Spinach dal with both chana and moong dal.
Mixed harvest vegetables with sweet potatoes, butternut squash, opo squash, carrots, chayote, peas, plantain, fenugreek, sesame powder, and jaggery.
Raita with a bit of raw onion and tomatoes.
And a semolina, cashew and raisin dessert.It was a hit, to put it mildly. We made loads. As one resident poet texted me that evening,
“Heaven is leftover Indian food!”
A salad of cucumber, mung bean sprouts, coconut and roasted cumin powder.
Green beans with fresh coconut, urad dal, turmeric and mustard seeds.
Cauliflower, potatoes and peas with cilantro, green chilis, ginger and coconut.
Spinach dal with both chana and moong dal.
Mixed harvest vegetables with sweet potatoes, butternut squash, opo squash, carrots, chayote, peas, plantain, fenugreek, sesame powder, and jaggery.
Raita with a bit of raw onion and tomatoes.
And a semolina, cashew and raisin dessert.It was a hit, to put it mildly. We made loads. As one resident poet texted me that evening,
“Heaven is leftover Indian food!”
