Join brothers Aroop and Auyon Mukharji as they brew up a pot of their mother’s warming masala chai. In addition to the live cooking demo, Aroop and Auyon will discuss bits of Indian culinary history and trivia, drawing on their upbringings in an Indian-American household in Kansas City, their experiences working at Williamstown’s own Spice Root as college students, and Auyon’s cookbook research. Likely topics will include butter chicken, navigating an Indian menu, and how to use the word curry without causing inadvertent offense.
Instructors:
Aroop Mukharji ’09 is a Visiting Scholar at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts, and an Associate of the Applied History Project at the Harvard Kennedy School, where he studies U.S. presidential history and foreign policy. Since 2010, he has been the recipe typist and archivist for his mother’s Kansas City-based Indian cooking class, which has featured 313 Indian recipes over 402 classes.
Auyon Mukharji ’07 is a member of the Boston-based folk band Darlingside. He has spent the past few years researching and working on an Indian cookbook with his mother, Jyoti. The recipes are a collection of family favorites from Punjab and Bengal (along with a smattering of preparations from South and West India), presented with a focus on historical context and cultural lineage.
Enrollment Limit: 500