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

塔拉娜·汗（Tarana Khan）居住在印度北部的前王族首都兰普尔（Rampur），她是当地的历史学家和小说家，致力于保护她所在城市与食物、文学和文化有关的独特遗产。她以前是一名教师，她的动力来自这座城市的年轻人，他们对自己的兰布里遗产保留着强烈的感觉，即使它在他们周围消失了。意识到这一问题的紧迫性，她开始收集以与“旧世界”有联系而闻名的老年居民的口述历史。她还开始探索著名的Rampur Raza图书馆，那里收藏了大量的乌尔都语和波斯语手稿，以寻找历史烹饪书籍。兰布里的一种特色菜——印度炒饭——现在只按一种基本的食谱烹饪——出现了50多种风格。为了重现这些历史悠久的食谱，她与一位来自古老厨师家族的khansama（厨师）合作，将措施、程序和食材转化为现代的同类产品。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。它们独特的香气和味道只存在于老一辈人的烹饪记忆中，他们仍然渴望吃提拉克chandan和其他小粒的当地品种，这些品种以前生长在兰普尔周围的水稻带。以这位“当地美食英雄”为榜样，这种合作关系弥合了烹饪记忆、当地遗产和失去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实践者、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：恢复和分析印度、巴基斯坦和英国殖民地、国家、地方和家庭收藏的历史烹饪书和其他与食物和饮食文化有关的文献。记录口述历史，使烹饪记忆在没有书面记录的当地文化背景下得以保存。3 .委托编写一本关于南亚食物和食物方式的新创作选集，以捕捉与家庭、家庭生活、热情好客和食物短缺等主题有关的记忆和想法。在受控制环境的“虚拟稻田”中种植传统水稻品种，从而免受现代病原体的侵害。然后，优选的特性可能会被纳入植物中，这些植物将在极端环境中生存和茁壮成长，同时还能提供不断增长的人口所需的高产和营养。合作伙伴关系的资助阶段的高潮将是兰普尔美食节。这个为期两天的活动由项目合作伙伴兰普尔拉扎图书馆主办，将重点关注传统食品的烹饪，以及来自兰普尔纳瓦布宫廷的乌尔都语和波斯语手稿的食谱。特别值得注意的是，该项目将使用传统大米，以恢复参与者在外观，味道和气味方面的情感反应。在19世纪晚期，兰普尔宫廷以赞助一个重要的文化节而闻名，该文化节以诗歌、音乐和（对我们来说最重要的）食物为特色。这次活动的一个显著特点是不同社会阶层和社区在市集文化的共享空间中融合在一起。在这一历史模式的基础上，在当代背景下，兰普尔美食节将把传统食品从其五星级住宿转移到街头，突出其受欢迎程度和可负担性，为当地厨师、街头摊贩和工匠提供一种谋生手段。该节日还将展示其他合作成果，包括一个历史食谱集，将档案资料提供给当代厨师，以及一部通过口述历史突出烹饪记忆的纪录片。

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.