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Chef Brar launches Maa Ki Baat, showcasing heirloom recipes, on YouTube
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Friday, 24 May, 2019, 15 : 00 PM [IST]
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Our Bureau, Mumbai
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Chef and television presenter Ranveer Brar recently launched his newest digital series, Maa Ki Baat, a YouTube series that will bring forth the secret recipes from home kitchens across India.
The interview-cum-recipe showcase will feature recipes ranging from rajma chawal to thepla. Moreover, the chef will converse and cook with mothers, turning sous chef to them whilst unravelling the rich legacy of Indian regional cuisine through their eyes.
Besides bringing local produce and regional dishes to light, Brar will talk to the homemakers about how they learned to cook, their favourite dishes and food secrets.
The first episode featured his mother, Surinder Kaur, who demonstrated her favourite rajma recipe, whilst reminiscing her journey as a wife, daughter-in-law and mother, who relocated from a small town to a city.
Brar said, “We take our home food for granted and the people who cook it. They provide for us day and night are the custodian of our family cuisine, but do we pause and ask, ‘Maa, tujhe kya pasand hai?’ (‘Mother, what do you like to eat?’)”
Since it commenced, the show has received over a million footprints across all digital platforms.
Brar conceptualised this show on a journey to highlight India’s culinary legacy and remind himself and others of the power of maa ke haath ka khana (food cooked by mothers).
The cornerstone of the show was a soulful endeavour to provide mom-cooks a chance to shine on screen by cooking their signature heirloom recipes, share the tips and tricks they come up with, not to forget them heirloom utensils used by them.
Scouting nationwide for guest cooks for the show, Brar invited mothers nationwide to send in their videos, through which they were selected to cook on it. The upcoming episodes will be featuring mothers from Kerala, Bengaluru, Tamil Nadu and North India.
“After I returned from the US and judged MasterChef India, I realised that there is a huge stream of Indian cooking that I - in fact, many of us - have not appreciated enough, and that is home-cooking,” he said.
“I was touched, moved and inspired by the food and the character of a home-maker, who is the chef of the household, and it drove me to go back and relive parts of my life to understand how my mother and grandmother used to cook and what was their relationship to food, which essentially was how the first idea of the show occurred,” Brar added.
“The idea was simple - to bring out the power of the homemaker and start a conversation about the ancestral recipes that Indian home kitchens carry forward,” he said.
“The personality and the character of the Indian mother are that of immense love, selflessness and inner beauty, which she brings to the table along with her food. As an Indian son, this show is my way of giving respect and credit to all Indian mothers from whom my biggest learning was that mothers never let anything go to waste, they even use the simplest of things like chaawal ka paani (the water used in the preparation of rice),” Brar said.
He added, “I wanted to understand what are the likes and dislikes of a mother because when our mums are cooking for us, none of us ever stop to think, ‘What does mom like to eat?’”
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