The cold comes to Kolkata in one fell swoop. The last hot licks of the summer sun linger until the end of October, and winter falls on the city, suddenly, like a blanket of cold winds and mist. By the second week of November, you're craving heat — the life-sustaining force of nature.
While I'm sadly stuck in Kolkata thinking about the warm bowl of umami-packed smoked pork and axone I had at a Naga restaurant in New Delhi earlier this year, you don't have to. You can learn all about heat and how it shapes and alters our food from Bandra Born Chef Gresham Fernandes as part of the Food Nerd Festival at The Masque Lab in Mumbai this weekend.
A collaboration between Goya Media and Edible Issues, the Food Nerd Festival is a celebration of Indian food enthusiasts and India's Food & Beverages industry insiders. The second edition of the Festival this year promises immersive sessions and workshops in both Bengaluru and Mumbai with hands-on learning opportunities from some of the country’s most exciting culinary minds. The day-long Mumbai leg of the Festival takes place at The Masque Lab on Saturday, November 23.
The concept behind this year's Food Nerd Festival is 'Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat' — the core elements of cooking and making food. The Mumbai leg of the festival will see four immersive sessions and workshops — each dedicated to one of the four elements — led by culinary legends like Chefs Gautam and Bala, who will take attendees through pickling, curing, and mastering the art of time and salt; Chef Heena Punwani, who will lead a workshop on using different kinds of fat like butter, ghee, oil, and cream to tease out a range of textures from moist and dense to light and flaky; Kobo Fermentary's Payel Shah, who will lead an exploration of Indian vinegars, shrubs, and the punch of flavour they bring; and Chef Gresham Fernandes, of Bandra Born fame, who will delve into the history of heat in food, myth-bust secrets, and get hands-on with how fire, time, and altitude change everything on your plate.
Chef Gresham Fernandes is a culinary maverick who's has been transforming Mumbai's culinary landscape with his exceptional skills and creative interpretations of classic meat dishes — like beef carpaccio with truffle ponzu and carrot-glazed pork belly. At 'Turning Up The Heat' — his immersive workshop session at the Festival, Chef Fernandes will elaborate on the history of how heat has shaped our food, and the science behind how it affects the textures and tastes of what we eat. It's gonna be fire!
Learn more and grab your tickets here.
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