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

塔拉娜·汗居住在印度北部前君主首府兰普尔，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。作为一名前教师，她的动机是这座城市的年轻人，他们对自己的兰普里传统保持着强烈的意识，即使它在他们周围消失了。意识到这一点的紧迫性，她开始收集年长居民的口述历史，这些人以与旧世界的联系而闻名。她还开始探索著名的Rampur Raza图书馆，那里收藏了丰富而可观的乌尔都语和波斯语手稿，以寻找历史食谱。Yakhni Pulao是拉姆普里的特色菜之一，现在只按照基本食谱烹饪，有50种或更多的风格。为了重现这些历史悠久的食谱，她与一个古老家庭的khansama或厨师合作，将措施、程序和配料转化为现代的等价物。一个特别的问题是，随着高产杂交类型的传播，已经灭绝的旧水稻品种消失了。它们独特的香气和味道只存在于老一辈人的烹饪记忆中，他们仍然渴望提拉克长丹和其他以前在兰普尔周围的水稻带种植的小颗粒当地品种。在这位当地美食英雄的带领下，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。它使食品历史学家、社会学家、文学学者和植物学家与遗产从业者、作家、厨师和街头小贩对话，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有关的挑战：1.恢复和分析与印度、巴基斯坦和英国殖民、国家、地方和家庭收藏的食品和食品文化有关的历史烹饪书籍和其他文献。记录口述历史，使烹饪记忆能够在当地文化背景下保存下来，而不需要书面记录。委托编写一本关于南亚食物和食物方式的新的创造性文集，以记录与家庭、家庭生活、好客和食物短缺等主题有关的记忆和想法。在可控环境下的“虚拟稻田”中种植传统水稻品种，防止现代病原体侵袭。然后，首选的特征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，同时还可以提供不断扩大的种群所需的高产和营养。这一合作伙伴关系资助阶段的高潮将是兰普尔美食节。这次为期两天的活动由项目合作伙伴Rampur Raza图书馆主办，将重点介绍传统食物的烹饪，以及来自Rampur Nawabs宫廷的乌尔都语和波斯手稿的食谱。特别值得注意的是，将使用为该项目种植的传统水稻来恢复参与者在外观、味道和气味方面的情绪反应。在十九世纪末，兰普尔宫廷以赞助一个重要的文化节而闻名，这个节日以诗歌、音乐和最重要的食物为特色。这次活动的一个显著特点是在集市文化的共享空间中融合了不同的社会阶层和社区。在当代背景下建立在这一历史模式的基础上，兰普尔美食节将把传统食物从5层住所转移到街道层面，突出受欢迎程度和负担能力，以促进当地厨师、街头小贩和工匠的谋生手段。艺术节还将展示其他合作成果，包括一部历史食谱收藏，使当代厨师可以获得来自档案来源的材料，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.