When I got my first job, I sent my friends a lot of desserts. Buying people baked goods was the best way to spend my money I decided. So my Zomato was full of cookies and tart deliveries in Delhi, Bangalore and where not.
I am the kind that romanticizes bakeries- tries to write a poem about the ruined bakery on Ross Island in Andaman- but cannot take more than 3 bites of a pie. or of any exclusively sweet thing. But I absolutely lemons, berries and all things citrus-y. They are the bridge that connect me to bakeries.
There was a Bakers’ Basket right under the building I lived in. From there, I would buy 2 lemon tarts for myself and 2 chocolate tarts for Pragya, when we didn’t live together and then later when we did. I would make mine last through the evening, she would eat hers right-away.
At the end of this phase of my life, I lived in Goa for a project. It was my first as an independent consultant. It was also the first time I would see Goa as a Goan might, not as a tourist. I lived in Panjim, knew to avoid the market during siesta and fell in love with a bakery there. I had just discovered Prateek Kuhad and was obsessed. I would walk long distances, perform boring market runs and do location scouting all while listening to ‘Cold Sholders’. Even now, when I happen upon these songs, I go back to the hot afternoons of staring at beautiful houses, anticipation of beer later, of understanding people and trades. It was a beautiful time. It was a life changing experience.
Recently I heard ‘Cold Mess’ on loop. It made me crave lemon tarts.
My experience making, feeding and eating lemon tarts
- I didn’t buy a single cooking or baking equipment when I started Via Dil. Mumma already had everything I could need to start a bakery. There were sieves, icing, decoration and other equipment that I did not know existed. They lived in multiple boxes and lay at the back of a dingy cupboard with Godlie’s biscuits and only slightly torn clothes. When I started Via Dil, I showed some of these things the warmth of the kitchen. The Oven was taken down from the loft and plugged in. I didn’t HAVE to buy anything till I wanted to bake a lemon tart. I could have still managed without a tart pan but I wanted to buy myself a kitchen equipment, any kitchen equipment. So I bought myself a tart-pan and felt like an imposter of an adult.
- Everyone loved the tart. It was new to them, they hadn’t had such a tangy dessert before. Mumma kept saying “kana magun aali and tikhat jhali” – which roughly translates to ‘someone who entered a place after you but became a pro’- till everyone was saying it.
- Mummy has an old, tattered baking recipe diary. I have hated it for how painstaking it made baking seem. I rememeber Mummy spending hours sieving flour, separating egg whites and yolks, stirring in only in direction and whatnot. It was a painful event. I never sieved my flour or mixed in only one direction and have changed my perception of baking. Maybe one day I will brave baking something from her diary.
babyR hangs round me all the time. I see her mimicking the things I do. It makes me look back at a tiny P, who saw people and unknowingly picked up things. Nothing as overt as a habit or a preference, but smaller textural things like familiarity for a particular type of music, the idea of painting as leisure. While I worked on the tart, I heard babyR sing “latthey di chadar” half minded-ly. A week ago I had heard her sing “mujhse hookup tu kar lena”. I like to think I am familiarizing her with the idea of patient, enjoyable cooking. That things are to be done for the joy of doing it, not to fit the idea of someone’s ‘perfect. I hope she figures that everything has a story, you just need to ask the right questions to find it.
Recipe
https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/231190/the-best-lemon-tart-ever/