FOOD
28
What kind of food have you been making at home?
We eat a lot of simple Indian home cooking like rice and
dal and lately I’ve been digging pretty deep into salads
and bowls. I feel like I went through a period of some
pretty intense comfort food indulgence of the mac and
cheese and deep dish pizza variety and am now wanting
to lighten things up.
In your eyes, how has Brooklyn Delhi changed since its
inception?
Brooklyn Delhi has always been a way for me to express
my identity as an Indian-American through food but the
arc of the products we have released also reflects the stage
of life I’m in at the time. In the beginning, we released
achaars, a spicy Indian condiment and moved into more
condiments—Curry Mustard and Curry Ketchup. When
I had kids, I became more focused on creating meals we
could all enjoy together but that me and my husband
could customize with our condiments, so that is where
our simmer sauces came in and why I launched all of
them to be mild. I figured that if I was feeling strapped
for time and wanting to just make one meal for everyone,
I was sure that other parents were looking for a similar
solution. Since the pandemic, there have been a lot more
people trying out our products and different types of food
in general and that has led me to create more educational
recipe content around how to use our products, especially
our achaars, which are not as well known to consumers.
During the pandemic, you also helped create Khaana
Collective, a recipe zine with proceeds going to an organization
fighting food insecurity. Can you talk about the
origins of that project and how it came together?
During quarantine, I really missed seeing and collaborating
with my food community so Khaana Collective was a
way for me to do that. Khaana means food in Hindi and
with Khaana Collective I wanted to create a community
cookbook. The zine features recipes from friends in food
including food writers Yewande Komolafe, Nik Sharma,
and Hetty McKinnon with profits from the sale of the
print zine going to St. John’s Bread & Life, a soup pantry
in Bed Stuy that feeds thousands of New Yorkers a day
and where I packed my achaars at Brooklyn Delhi for the
first four years.
Photo by Erin Scott.