[Music]
if you could ask your parents or your
grandparents to cook you something right
now what would you pick
is it a plate of dumplings or some sort
of fruit pie or maybe it’s a stew that
you can’t get out of your head what is
this dish what does it look like what
are some of the Associated smells that
come with this dish for you from the
moment it enters the room to the first
few bites what is it about this
particular dish that strikes you at your
core think about the surrounding
environment where what what is the
environment what is the experience that
encapsulates this dish where does it
transport you my food memory starting
Colombo Sri Lanka the Island Sun is
beating down in my face as I’m sitting
in this really uncomfortable fold-up
chair we’re in the parking lot of the
local church for an annual fundraiser
and my mom and grandma are hosting a
food stand at this food stand they’re
serving this dish called a dosa which is
this savory crepe that’s made out of a
fermented batter of rice and lentils I’m
nine or ten at the time and my single
duty is to make sure as soon as my
grandma’s dosa
it’s a plate I quickly have to dress it
with an assortment of colorful Sam balls
and chutneys it feels like the longest
day of my life I see all the kids
playing everywhere else and I’m stuck in
a tent it feels like a sauna next to
four hot hot pans and my mom and my
grandmother just bickering all day to be
honest I don’t want to be anywhere near
this tent but through this sense of
forced labor I notice a few things
throughout the day first of all we have
the longest lineup out of any food a
vendor at the event and it’s sneaking
around the corner and there’s a sea of
smiles people will take their food they
would leave they would eat and then it
would come back to try to talk to my mom
or grandma and then my grandma would
make her way around
try to hug and kiss as many people as
she could witnessing my grandma’s
ability to transform someone’s mood
through food was hypnotizing if you
think of nostalgia as a plane of time
think of food as a bullet train that can
take you to a specific spot we often
associate food memories to people and
places and specific points in our lives
and we attach deep nostalgia to some of
the rituals that are associated with
food memories my mom is an excellent
cook and she learned from her mom and
her grandmother some of my earliest food
memories are helping them in some sort
of menial way you know picture a large
kitchen hot it’s always was always hot
or a half a dozen people there’s an
auntie grinding rice to make that batter
there’s another auntie in the back
making some sort of fish curry and
someone else’s grinding chilies for
sambar those this symphony of sounds
from the grind of that mortar and pestle
to the popping and crackling of the wood
fire my aunties and my mom and my
grandmas would gossip and catch up and
babysit while they were cooking in this
space and over time and repetition the
food became second nature muscle memory
there were no recipes my mom would
associate dishes to people so if
so-and-so was visiting we would make
such and such let’s go back to that dish
of yours for a second have you ever lost
your relationship to your family’s food
so the setting I didn’t realize how
important this setting was until I was
plucked from it we were living in Sri
Lanka in the middle of a civil war and
my parents tried to do their best to
shield my sisters and myself from it
until they couldn’t select many other
families in the 80s and 90s we left Sri
Lanka and we came to Canada I remember
those first few months quite vividly it
felt like there was a mountain of stress
on my parents shoulders as there were
navigating a new land a new culture and
for some reason nobody had quite told
him how cold it gets here in Canada we
arrived on Thanksgiving Day in 1990 and
it was cold back then so my mom had a
plan you know through the midst of this
chaos she wanted to create some sort of
some some conduit back home to the
culture and she wanted to recreate the
kitchen experience to do that so she
would take my dad and myself and we
would drive throughout Scarborough
looking for stores and ingredients and
I’d be sitting in the backseat just
staring at this endless highway of strip
malls we’d come back home she would
relearn and recreate these traditional
dishes based on what was available to
her my parents couldn’t control the
climate outside and that and the
changing world around them so they
figured they need to have some sort of
control over the dining experience
suddenly now these dishes that we would
have once in a while back home were very
important they were transcendent these
dishes became a ritualistic they were
equal parts nostalgia and comfort
wrapped in a blanket of certainty and in
high school I met friends that felt the
same way you know they would have
fathers and mothers that would try to
bring a faraway place a little closer
the kitchen became that portal for us we
settled into this ritual and I like to
call the Sunday dosa experience so every
Sunday morning I’d wake up walk over to
the kitchen the TV would be on one side
my mom would be on the other she’d be
making something for a couple of hours
we’d be eating and catching up just how
school most the time she would be just
nagging me like why why aren’t you
married yet why don’t you have kids okay
mom I’m 14 years old but this was an
awesome ritual that I had for many years
in my life have you ever lost a food
ritual and maybe you lost it when you
first moved at a home that’s what
happened to me
suddenly now I didn’t have those two
hours every Sunday morning with my dad
and my mom my Sundays felt a little
empty it felt like something was
different and I’ll admit it changed me
I was out of my mom’s kitchen for the
first time in my life and eventually I
started traveling for work and I was
experiencing a world of food I was
exploring food and everything was shiny
and new and I had two types of food
experiences on one hand I’d be in a hole
in the wall somewhere eating a bowl of
something that had such a direct
connection to the person serving it to
me and on the other I’d be in these
pristine dining rooms with white
tablecloths and I have our tasting menus
where there was modernist this and
molecular that this juxtaposition of
food in the context of past present and
future was really seducing it really
lured me in and I left the world of IT
and I entered the arena of food food
writing 25 years after leaving Sri Lanka
I was invited to go back on a culinary
trip and changed my life everything that
I had built in my memory bank to be so
monumental and big was suddenly just so
small from those streets to even that
church and the food had evolved to
things that looked familiar
tasted different the food of my homeland
had evolved while we were away like it
does everywhere else on the last day of
this trip I was staring at this yoki Sun
that was setting over the Indian Ocean
with my feet in the sand and I had a bit
of a revelation about my mom’s cooking
it was a time machine it is a time
machine it is a lost language to food at
a specific point in history somehow
contained through immigration and her
muscle memory I had to find a way to
preserve that you know on one hand we
look at food as a device for nostalgia
and it offers us a glimpse to the past
it can tell you where you’re from where
your parents and your grandparents are
from it’s a family history book
a metaphorical heirloom and on the other
food can be a glimpse into the future it
can tell us what we’re going you know in
a world where cultural delineations are
being blurred and chefs are taking one
kind of cuisine and mixing it with one
kind of technique to create something
new that’s a transient thing and this is
a suspended thing I saw it as a choice
between emotion and science and I leaned
towards this idea of nostalgia and I
became obsessed with the idea of food
possibly being a time machine to be
honest there’s no better place to do
that than here I end up in kitchens
where I made a large number of families
who come from far away places that make
Canada their new home and they bring
with them these really rich traditional
dishes along with them every loaf of
bread that they baked for me and every
plate of rice that they served for me
has a deep story I firmly believe that
in measure the success of a nation’s
legacy by the way it adopts and
preserves food and culture from else so
what is it about this so let’s go back
and talk about that dish think about
that dish recently I was invited to
lunch by a friend of mine and the
invitation was vague
it said mom’s making beef noodle soup do
you want to come I don’t care what show
you’re binging on Netflix if you get an
invite like that you go promise me
you’ll go so I go to my friend’s house
and the three of us hanging in the
kitchen
Michelle’s making some tea while her
mom’s staring at this really big pot and
it’s blackened on the outside from years
of use with dents everywhere and she’s
gently stirring this this pot with us
and thrall look on her face so I looked
at my friend Michelle and I asked her
about this dish the soup why is it so
special and she says that it’s a family
specialty and it’s been in the family
for four generations and her mom used to
make it regularly up until recently now
she makes it a couple times a year a few
seconds later her mom puts the ladle
down and she turns to me and she said
it’s very labor-intensive it
really difficult I only have a few pots
left in me and with that a wave of
silence just covers a room and you could
feel that their emotions were attracting
from one of joy to slightly somber to
try to break the ice I looked to my
friend and I said okay but Michelle you
can help your mom
you know the soup you’ve learned it I
don’t know you don’t know it
I haven’t learnt it and I could feel
this cocktail of frustration for a more
equal parts regret and guilt this recipe
had been in my friends family for four
generations and I was there to taste one
of the last iterations of it before it
disappeared forever so you know I asked
my friends and colleagues this over the
years what is that one dish it’s so
special to you why is it special and
have you taken the time to learn it in
most cases the answer is no and I get
all kinds of excuses from you know the
pace of life is fast corporate
everything life is busy but also foods
accessible I can get anything I want
whenever I want why don’t you learn a
recipe but if you don’t learn that
recipe what about all the experiences
and the social rituals and context that
comes with that dish food is a dynamic
thing and it’s constantly evolving and
changing and it does that through war
immigration and especially through
technology technology has probably had
the biggest impact on food in this room
technology can probably tell us where to
get the best shawarma in the city and if
you’re wondering it’s across the river
at five minute drive in this room
technology can give you the best
delivery within minutes convenience is a
good thing right convenience makes us
better eaters hopefully more conscious
eaters and hopefully we can say that
convenience is allowed us to learn about
our neighbors cuisines but there is also
this idea of food
a symbol of status now we crave new
experiences and new restaurants and new
food festivals we constantly want to try
something new and they become these
notches on our belt we want to be able
to try something new and then share it
with our friends and networks if you
consume enough digital media it’s really
hard to not get sucked into that chase
but food isn’t just about notches on
your belt the problem with new
experiences is that it tends to push
everything into the background so as
you’re on this roller coaster to an
unknown destination with quick hits of
elation and excitement what are you
leaving behind as you navigate this
digital space what about the things that
make up your culinary identity let’s go
back to that dish of yours
the one that your mom or dad makes
fairly regularly the one that your Nonna
makes regularly how many pots does she
have left in her and when you lose that
recipe do you lose it forever and when
you lose that recipe do you lose the
social context and the experience it
comes with it there’s a beauty to the
idea of cooking things slowly sure over
time we have to find ways to make
something beautiful out of boredom
bottom of the barrel ingredients to coax
flavors and textures out of something
that was some odd bits and ends but I
think it was also a way for families to
share one space together to be in a
wonder room while they cooked things
slowly kind of like my mom’s dosa
experience every Sunday as a food writer
and traveler I noticed that recipes and
rituals are falling through the cracks
of our generations for a number of
reasons it could be hardship could be
immigration but it’s also a lack of
interest every generation has its own
way of trying to find a way to work with
the complex world and navigate it but
what about the things that we lose in
that process for me what I try to do is
I try to get around this about a decade
ago and I figured okay I’m gonna try to
learn the ancestral recipes of my
parents
so I’ll be I’ll be honest in the
beginning I took a very technical
approach I got my mom we’re in the
kitchen there’s a GoPro over here a
camera over here a tape recorder a
notepad okay mom show me everything
didn’t go quite as planned so my mom has
never written anyone sappy down and she
has a really interesting way of
measuring things so we start with
measurements because when you’re cooking
you want measurements and she’ll use her
fingers to start pinching and she draw
circles on her hands to give me portions
we be we’d be staring at a bowl that’s
something’s boiling in this bowl and
then ask my mom mommy how do you know
when that’s done oh look no it’s done
it’s done that’s how you know it’s done
that’s how it’s done
no mom so after a decade about of trying
to do this I realize that it’s actually
not about the recipe at all my mom’s
food tastes very different from mine
because as soon as she hands that recipe
over to me it evolves and changes the
way I shop is different the way I prep
is different my hands are different so
my ritual now is to figure out some way
to encapsulate the mom experience just
that the time that you spend in the
kitchen I was speaking to my friends
Michele recently and she admitted to me
that she was afraid of her mom’s
mortality that her family food was
attached to the mortality and she didn’t
want to dress that if you understand and
accept that your mom’s cooking is fine
I think you can then decide whether you
want to preserve some or all of it I
know that when I spend time with my mom
the majority of time is in the kitchen
she’s grinding coconut I’m cutting an
egg plan the food is still the
soundtrack in that space and the
soundtrack has evolved over the years
and it’s different but it’s still
furnishes the space that we try to
create I don’t know how many pots my mom
has left in her but I know it’s a fixed
amount so in my head there’s a race to
try to immortalize whatever I can
especially immortalize what has made her
her and also what has made me into the
person I am today because of that we
need to do that
we need to work on that habit before
it’s too late spend some time with your
mom and get to know her get to
understand what makes her her whether
it’s a latke or whether it’s a soup or
whether it’s a beautiful loaf of banana
bread do it before it’s late spend some
time in your family kitchen to see if
you can absorb some of that ancestral
wisdom whether it’s through the recipe
the technique or the ritual thank you [Applause]
if you could ask your parents or your
grandparents to cook you something right
now what would you pick
is it a plate of dumplings or some sort
of fruit pie or maybe it’s a stew that
you can’t get out of your head what is
this dish what does it look like what
are some of the Associated smells that
come with this dish for you from the
moment it enters the room to the first
few bites what is it about this
particular dish that strikes you at your
core think about the surrounding
environment where what what is the
environment what is the experience that
encapsulates this dish where does it
transport you my food memory starting
Colombo Sri Lanka the Island Sun is
beating down in my face as I’m sitting
in this really uncomfortable fold-up
chair we’re in the parking lot of the
local church for an annual fundraiser
and my mom and grandma are hosting a
food stand at this food stand they’re
serving this dish called a dosa which is
this savory crepe that’s made out of a
fermented batter of rice and lentils I’m
nine or ten at the time and my single
duty is to make sure as soon as my
grandma’s dosa
it’s a plate I quickly have to dress it
with an assortment of colorful Sam balls
and chutneys it feels like the longest
day of my life I see all the kids
playing everywhere else and I’m stuck in
a tent it feels like a sauna next to
four hot hot pans and my mom and my
grandmother just bickering all day to be
honest I don’t want to be anywhere near
this tent but through this sense of
forced labor I notice a few things
throughout the day first of all we have
the longest lineup out of any food a
vendor at the event and it’s sneaking
around the corner and there’s a sea of
smiles people will take their food they
would leave they would eat and then it
would come back to try to talk to my mom
or grandma and then my grandma would
make her way around
try to hug and kiss as many people as
she could witnessing my grandma’s
ability to transform someone’s mood
through food was hypnotizing if you
think of nostalgia as a plane of time
think of food as a bullet train that can
take you to a specific spot we often
associate food memories to people and
places and specific points in our lives
and we attach deep nostalgia to some of
the rituals that are associated with
food memories my mom is an excellent
cook and she learned from her mom and
her grandmother some of my earliest food
memories are helping them in some sort
of menial way you know picture a large
kitchen hot it’s always was always hot
or a half a dozen people there’s an
auntie grinding rice to make that batter
there’s another auntie in the back
making some sort of fish curry and
someone else’s grinding chilies for
sambar those this symphony of sounds
from the grind of that mortar and pestle
to the popping and crackling of the wood
fire my aunties and my mom and my
grandmas would gossip and catch up and
babysit while they were cooking in this
space and over time and repetition the
food became second nature muscle memory
there were no recipes my mom would
associate dishes to people so if
so-and-so was visiting we would make
such and such let’s go back to that dish
of yours for a second have you ever lost
your relationship to your family’s food
so the setting I didn’t realize how
important this setting was until I was
plucked from it we were living in Sri
Lanka in the middle of a civil war and
my parents tried to do their best to
shield my sisters and myself from it
until they couldn’t select many other
families in the 80s and 90s we left Sri
Lanka and we came to Canada I remember
those first few months quite vividly it
felt like there was a mountain of stress
on my parents shoulders as there were
navigating a new land a new culture and
for some reason nobody had quite told
him how cold it gets here in Canada we
arrived on Thanksgiving Day in 1990 and
it was cold back then so my mom had a
plan you know through the midst of this
chaos she wanted to create some sort of
some some conduit back home to the
culture and she wanted to recreate the
kitchen experience to do that so she
would take my dad and myself and we
would drive throughout Scarborough
looking for stores and ingredients and
I’d be sitting in the backseat just
staring at this endless highway of strip
malls we’d come back home she would
relearn and recreate these traditional
dishes based on what was available to
her my parents couldn’t control the
climate outside and that and the
changing world around them so they
figured they need to have some sort of
control over the dining experience
suddenly now these dishes that we would
have once in a while back home were very
important they were transcendent these
dishes became a ritualistic they were
equal parts nostalgia and comfort
wrapped in a blanket of certainty and in
high school I met friends that felt the
same way you know they would have
fathers and mothers that would try to
bring a faraway place a little closer
the kitchen became that portal for us we
settled into this ritual and I like to
call the Sunday dosa experience so every
Sunday morning I’d wake up walk over to
the kitchen the TV would be on one side
my mom would be on the other she’d be
making something for a couple of hours
we’d be eating and catching up just how
school most the time she would be just
nagging me like why why aren’t you
married yet why don’t you have kids okay
mom I’m 14 years old but this was an
awesome ritual that I had for many years
in my life have you ever lost a food
ritual and maybe you lost it when you
first moved at a home that’s what
happened to me
suddenly now I didn’t have those two
hours every Sunday morning with my dad
and my mom my Sundays felt a little
empty it felt like something was
different and I’ll admit it changed me
I was out of my mom’s kitchen for the
first time in my life and eventually I
started traveling for work and I was
experiencing a world of food I was
exploring food and everything was shiny
and new and I had two types of food
experiences on one hand I’d be in a hole
in the wall somewhere eating a bowl of
something that had such a direct
connection to the person serving it to
me and on the other I’d be in these
pristine dining rooms with white
tablecloths and I have our tasting menus
where there was modernist this and
molecular that this juxtaposition of
food in the context of past present and
future was really seducing it really
lured me in and I left the world of IT
and I entered the arena of food food
writing 25 years after leaving Sri Lanka
I was invited to go back on a culinary
trip and changed my life everything that
I had built in my memory bank to be so
monumental and big was suddenly just so
small from those streets to even that
church and the food had evolved to
things that looked familiar
tasted different the food of my homeland
had evolved while we were away like it
does everywhere else on the last day of
this trip I was staring at this yoki Sun
that was setting over the Indian Ocean
with my feet in the sand and I had a bit
of a revelation about my mom’s cooking
it was a time machine it is a time
machine it is a lost language to food at
a specific point in history somehow
contained through immigration and her
muscle memory I had to find a way to
preserve that you know on one hand we
look at food as a device for nostalgia
and it offers us a glimpse to the past
it can tell you where you’re from where
your parents and your grandparents are
from it’s a family history book
a metaphorical heirloom and on the other
food can be a glimpse into the future it
can tell us what we’re going you know in
a world where cultural delineations are
being blurred and chefs are taking one
kind of cuisine and mixing it with one
kind of technique to create something
new that’s a transient thing and this is
a suspended thing I saw it as a choice
between emotion and science and I leaned
towards this idea of nostalgia and I
became obsessed with the idea of food
possibly being a time machine to be
honest there’s no better place to do
that than here I end up in kitchens
where I made a large number of families
who come from far away places that make
Canada their new home and they bring
with them these really rich traditional
dishes along with them every loaf of
bread that they baked for me and every
plate of rice that they served for me
has a deep story I firmly believe that
in measure the success of a nation’s
legacy by the way it adopts and
preserves food and culture from else so
what is it about this so let’s go back
and talk about that dish think about
that dish recently I was invited to
lunch by a friend of mine and the
invitation was vague
it said mom’s making beef noodle soup do
you want to come I don’t care what show
you’re binging on Netflix if you get an
invite like that you go promise me
you’ll go so I go to my friend’s house
and the three of us hanging in the
kitchen
Michelle’s making some tea while her
mom’s staring at this really big pot and
it’s blackened on the outside from years
of use with dents everywhere and she’s
gently stirring this this pot with us
and thrall look on her face so I looked
at my friend Michelle and I asked her
about this dish the soup why is it so
special and she says that it’s a family
specialty and it’s been in the family
for four generations and her mom used to
make it regularly up until recently now
she makes it a couple times a year a few
seconds later her mom puts the ladle
down and she turns to me and she said
it’s very labor-intensive it
really difficult I only have a few pots
left in me and with that a wave of
silence just covers a room and you could
feel that their emotions were attracting
from one of joy to slightly somber to
try to break the ice I looked to my
friend and I said okay but Michelle you
can help your mom
you know the soup you’ve learned it I
don’t know you don’t know it
I haven’t learnt it and I could feel
this cocktail of frustration for a more
equal parts regret and guilt this recipe
had been in my friends family for four
generations and I was there to taste one
of the last iterations of it before it
disappeared forever so you know I asked
my friends and colleagues this over the
years what is that one dish it’s so
special to you why is it special and
have you taken the time to learn it in
most cases the answer is no and I get
all kinds of excuses from you know the
pace of life is fast corporate
everything life is busy but also foods
accessible I can get anything I want
whenever I want why don’t you learn a
recipe but if you don’t learn that
recipe what about all the experiences
and the social rituals and context that
comes with that dish food is a dynamic
thing and it’s constantly evolving and
changing and it does that through war
immigration and especially through
technology technology has probably had
the biggest impact on food in this room
technology can probably tell us where to
get the best shawarma in the city and if
you’re wondering it’s across the river
at five minute drive in this room
technology can give you the best
delivery within minutes convenience is a
good thing right convenience makes us
better eaters hopefully more conscious
eaters and hopefully we can say that
convenience is allowed us to learn about
our neighbors cuisines but there is also
this idea of food
a symbol of status now we crave new
experiences and new restaurants and new
food festivals we constantly want to try
something new and they become these
notches on our belt we want to be able
to try something new and then share it
with our friends and networks if you
consume enough digital media it’s really
hard to not get sucked into that chase
but food isn’t just about notches on
your belt the problem with new
experiences is that it tends to push
everything into the background so as
you’re on this roller coaster to an
unknown destination with quick hits of
elation and excitement what are you
leaving behind as you navigate this
digital space what about the things that
make up your culinary identity let’s go
back to that dish of yours
the one that your mom or dad makes
fairly regularly the one that your Nonna
makes regularly how many pots does she
have left in her and when you lose that
recipe do you lose it forever and when
you lose that recipe do you lose the
social context and the experience it
comes with it there’s a beauty to the
idea of cooking things slowly sure over
time we have to find ways to make
something beautiful out of boredom
bottom of the barrel ingredients to coax
flavors and textures out of something
that was some odd bits and ends but I
think it was also a way for families to
share one space together to be in a
wonder room while they cooked things
slowly kind of like my mom’s dosa
experience every Sunday as a food writer
and traveler I noticed that recipes and
rituals are falling through the cracks
of our generations for a number of
reasons it could be hardship could be
immigration but it’s also a lack of
interest every generation has its own
way of trying to find a way to work with
the complex world and navigate it but
what about the things that we lose in
that process for me what I try to do is
I try to get around this about a decade
ago and I figured okay I’m gonna try to
learn the ancestral recipes of my
parents
so I’ll be I’ll be honest in the
beginning I took a very technical
approach I got my mom we’re in the
kitchen there’s a GoPro over here a
camera over here a tape recorder a
notepad okay mom show me everything
didn’t go quite as planned so my mom has
never written anyone sappy down and she
has a really interesting way of
measuring things so we start with
measurements because when you’re cooking
you want measurements and she’ll use her
fingers to start pinching and she draw
circles on her hands to give me portions
we be we’d be staring at a bowl that’s
something’s boiling in this bowl and
then ask my mom mommy how do you know
when that’s done oh look no it’s done
it’s done that’s how you know it’s done
that’s how it’s done
no mom so after a decade about of trying
to do this I realize that it’s actually
not about the recipe at all my mom’s
food tastes very different from mine
because as soon as she hands that recipe
over to me it evolves and changes the
way I shop is different the way I prep
is different my hands are different so
my ritual now is to figure out some way
to encapsulate the mom experience just
that the time that you spend in the
kitchen I was speaking to my friends
Michele recently and she admitted to me
that she was afraid of her mom’s
mortality that her family food was
attached to the mortality and she didn’t
want to dress that if you understand and
accept that your mom’s cooking is fine
I think you can then decide whether you
want to preserve some or all of it I
know that when I spend time with my mom
the majority of time is in the kitchen
she’s grinding coconut I’m cutting an
egg plan the food is still the
soundtrack in that space and the
soundtrack has evolved over the years
and it’s different but it’s still
furnishes the space that we try to
create I don’t know how many pots my mom
has left in her but I know it’s a fixed
amount so in my head there’s a race to
try to immortalize whatever I can
especially immortalize what has made her
her and also what has made me into the
person I am today because of that we
need to do that
we need to work on that habit before
it’s too late spend some time with your
mom and get to know her get to
understand what makes her her whether
it’s a latke or whether it’s a soup or
whether it’s a beautiful loaf of banana
bread do it before it’s late spend some
time in your family kitchen to see if
you can absorb some of that ancestral
wisdom whether it’s through the recipe
the technique or the ritual thank you [Applause]
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