Why "Masala Box"?
... fair question
We are asked this, pretty much all the time: "Why Masala Box?" That box and those masalas are an umbilical cord that keep us rooted. To the smell of the earth we come from. To our very old culture. To little life-lessons learnt at mother's knee: always add a touch of sugar to everything savory. And a hint of salt to anything sweet. Temper yourself as you would spices. Too much, and everything tastes burnt. Too little, and the taste will be lacking. Always temper. Balance.
The masalas in the box are a constant reminder of the familiar smells and flavors of home. Home-cooked food, made by Ma is a big, big deal. We absolutely love, love, love eating out, and experiencing other cultures. But comfort food is always cooked at home by our mothers. Or for that matter by grandmothers, a Dad or two, and in many cases by trusted cooks who cook for the same family one generation after another.
It maybe the simplest of meals. Dal and rice with rivulets of ghee running down its sides. With some bright red pickle, made over the summer months, on the side. But they are relished with much aplomb. With our eyes. Our fingers. Our every sense. It all starts there. With that little masala box of spices and culture. No matter where we are. Or where we go, the box of masalas, with its vestiges of home is always wrapped along. It is after all where we come from.
Let us cook for you the way our mothers cooked for us. For that is the best way we know how to. With the choicest of ingredients. With our unique spice blends. A touch of sugar. Nuanced layers of spice. And a lot of heart and soul.
Our Story ...
... began on a quiet, nondescript winter evening over a dinner of falafel and dolmas, peppered with wanting to do something more with our 30-(ahem)-year-old selves. That turned into wanting to get our hands into, inside and around food. Specifically, unpretentious good quality Indian food made from locally sourced fresh produce, enhanced with age-old recipes and spice blends learnt from our respective mothers and grandmothers. And so we did.
Other than our mutual love for good food, feeding others and a passion for sourcing unique recipes from India's vast culinary repertoire, Anshu and I are really as different as butter and whey. She is a pure vegetarian from a Marwari family with a penchant for “khomcha” (snacks). I am from a Maharashtrian family, who (say they) love their khomcha.
But, really they insist every snack or two must be followed by a grandiose meal of roti-sabzi-dal-rice-and-salad-and-pickle-and-papad.
And oh! A
plant based diet is welcome (if that) only for a couple of days at a time. Fortunately though, this serendipity of two distinct food lineages has been all kinds of
beautiful for us. Conventionally speaking, you would be hard-pressed to find the relatively mellow dal-baati happily co-existing with the fiery Malvani fish curry.
Then again that's how we remember the India of our childhoods. A happy confluence of Hindu, Moghlai, British, Chinese,
This confluence and jostling has brought with it a multitude of cooking techniques that seldom gets a chance to shine through in the world of commercial cooking. For far too long Indian food has been understood mostly in terms of samosas, chicken tandoori, naan, biryani and a curry or two. India's very vast repository of unleavened breads, alongwith an equally wide assortment of dals, fragrant pulaos, sprouted grains and vegetable sides, green or otherwise have largely been unexplored. It is our long-term goal to place the food culled from India's home-kitchens on America's table. It is our hope and our mission that with this first venture we will bring to Omaha a taste of original Indian recipes as we've grown to love. Peppered here and there with our own playful twists.