Forgotten Food: Culinary Memory, Local Heritage and Lost Agricultural Varieties in India

Tarana Khan位于印度北部的前王子首都Rampur，是当地的历史学家和小说家，致力于保护她的城市与食物，文学和文化有关的独特遗产。她以前是一名教师，她的动机是这个城市的年轻人，他们保留着强烈的兰普里传统感，即使它在他们周围消失了。认识到这一紧迫性，她开始收集老年居民的口述历史，因为他们与“旧世界”的联系而闻名。她还开始探索著名的Rampur Raza图书馆，其丰富而可观的乌尔都语和波斯语手稿收藏，以寻找历史性的烹饪书。兰普里的一种特色菜是yakhni pulo，现在只按照基本的食谱烹饪，有50多种风格。为了重现这些历史悠久的食谱，她与一位来自一个古老厨师家庭的khansama或厨师合作，将措施，程序和成分转化为现代的对等物。一个特别的问题是随着高产杂交品种的传播而灭绝的老品种水稻的消失。他们独特的香味和味道只在老一辈的烹饪记忆中保留下来，他们仍然渴望tilak chandan和其他小颗粒的当地品种，这些品种以前生长在Rampur周围的水稻带。从这位“当地食物英雄”开始，这种合作关系弥合了烹饪记忆，当地遗产和丢失的农业品种之间的差距。它将食品历史学家，社会学家，文学学者和植物科学家与遗产从业者，作家，厨师和街头小贩进行对话，通过四个主要的“工作包”解决与印度当地社区和食品可持续性相关的挑战：1。恢复和分析历史食谱和其他文献有关的食物和饮食文化保存在殖民地，国家，地方和家庭收藏在印度，巴基斯坦和英国。记录口述历史，使烹饪记忆在没有文字记录的地方文化背景下得以保存。委托编写一本关于南亚食物和饮食方式的新的创意文集，以捕捉与家庭、家庭生活、好客和食物短缺等主题有关的记忆和想法。在受控制的环境中种植传统水稻品种，保护其免受现代病原体的侵害。然后，可以将优选的特性融入植物中，这些植物将在极端环境中生存和茁壮成长，同时还提供不断扩大的人口所需的高产和营养。该合作伙伴关系的资助阶段的高潮将是Rampur食品节。这个为期两天的活动由项目合作伙伴Rampur Raza图书馆主办，将重点关注传统食物的烹饪，以乌尔都语和波斯语手稿的食谱从Rampur Nawabs的法院。特别值得注意的是，将使用为该项目种植的传统水稻，以恢复参与者在外观，味道和气味方面的情感反应。在世纪后期，兰普尔宫廷因赞助一个重要的文化节而闻名，这个节日是以诗歌、音乐和最重要的食物为特色的。这次活动的一个显著特点是不同社会阶层和社区在集市文化的共享空间中融合。在当代背景下建立在这一历史模式的基础上，Rampur美食节将把传统美食从其5星级酒店搬到街头，突出受欢迎程度和可负担性，为当地厨师、街头小贩和工匠提供谋生手段。该节日还将展示其他合作成果，包括一个历史性的食谱收藏，使材料从档案来源提供给当代厨师和纪录片突出烹饪记忆通过口述历史。

Based in the former princely capital of Rampur in north India, Tarana Khan is a local historian and novelist working to preserve her city's unique heritage linked to food, literature and culture. A former teacher, her motivation is the city's youth who retain a strong sense of their Rampuri heritage, even as it disappears around them. Recognizing the urgency, she began collecting oral histories from older residents known for their connections to the 'old world'. She also began exploring the famed Rampur Raza Library, with its rich and sizeable collection of Urdu and Persian manuscripts, for historic cookbooks. One Rampuri speciality, yakhni pulao - now cooked only to a basic recipe - appeared in fifty or more styles. Seeking to recreate these historic recipes, she worked with a khansama, or cook, from an old cheffing family to translate measures, procedures and ingredients into modern equivalents. A particular problem was the disappearance of older varieties of rice that had become extinct with the spread of high-yielding hybrid types. Their distinct aroma and taste remained alive only in the culinary memories of the older generation, who still yearn for tilak chandan and other small-grained local varieties previously grown in the rice-belt around Rampur.Taking a lead from this 'local food hero', this partnership bridges the gap between culinary memory, local heritage and lost agricultural varieties. Bringing food historians, sociologists, literary scholars and plant scientists into dialogue with heritage practitioners, authors, cooks and street vendors, it addresses challenges linked to local communities and food sustainability in India through four main 'work packages':1. recovery and analysis of historic cookbooks and other literatures relating to food and food cultures preserved in colonial, national, local and family collections in India, Pakistan and the UK.2. recording oral history to enable culinary memories to be preserved in local cultural contexts with no written record.3. commissioning a new anthology of creative writing on South Asian food and foodways to capture memories and ideas relating to such themes as family, domesticity, hospitality and food shortage.4. growing heritage rice varieties in controlled-environment 'virtual rice paddies' protected from modern pathogens. Preferred characteristics may then be incorporated into plants that will survive and thrive in extreme environments, while also delivering high yields and nutrients required by an ever-expanding population.The culmination of a funded-stage of the partnership will be the Rampur Food Festival. This two-day event hosted by project partner, the Rampur Raza Library, will focus on the cooking of heritage food to the recipes in Urdu and Persian manuscripts from the court of the Rampur Nawabs. Of particular note will be the use of heritage rice grown for the project to recover participants' emotional response in terms of appearance, taste and smell. In the late nineteenth century, the Rampur court was known for its patronage of an important cultural festival, the Jashn-e-Benazir, featuring poetry, music and, most significantly for our purposes, food. A distinctive feature of this event was the mixing of different social classes and communities in the shared space of bazaar culture. Building on this historic model in a contemporary context, the Rampur Food Festival will move heritage food from its 5* lodgings to street level, highlighting popularity and affordability to foster a means of livelihood for local cooks, street vendors and artisans. The festival will also showcase other partnership outputs, including a historic recipe collection making material from archival sources available to contemporary cooks and a documentary highlighting culinary memory through oral history.