News and Features
The Joy of Feeding
By Nicola Humphrey published Oct 1, 2012
In a celebrity chef world, Meeru Dhalwala of Vij's restaurant tries to resurrect the the home-cooked meal
Meeru Dhalwala was shocked. The co-owner of Vij's and Rangoli restaurants (and the soon-to-open Shanik in Seattle, named after her and husband Vikram Vij's youngest daughter) was talking to a regular customer who confessed that she ate Vij's packaged curries several times a week. But they're so high in fat, Dhalwala said. And salt. And sugar. Built from the recipes used in her restaurants, they were designed for special occasions, not everyday meals. Dhalwala, a restaurateur of 17 years, found herself advocating against her own self-interest, evangelizing for home cooking, for its health-giving properties, its ability to nourish both the self and others.
Dhalwala had found a mission. Pop culture, with its complicated food shows and cult-chef restaurant brands, suggests that cooking should be left to professionals. She counters that untrained cooks are capable of creating simple, nutritious, and ethnically diverse dishes. To prove the point and to stimulate a return to the kitchen, she gathered volunteers to organize and cook a feast for 500 at UBC Farm in May 2011. Fifteen home cooks contributed favoured recipes. She called it the Joy of Feeding.
This year's Joy fed over 600 with dishes from 16 countries including Syria, Sierra Leone, Guatemala, and Sweden. But the planning began months earlier. With her steering committee-including Mary Mackay, head baker and co-owner of Terra Breads; Amy Robertson, co-director of the Vancouver Farmers Markets; and Amy Frye, programs manager at the Centre for Sustainable Food Systems at UBC Farm-she enlisted sponsors, volunteers, and, most importantly, untrained cooks. Rewarding confidence and enthusiasm over mastery and technique, Dhalwala recruited strangers in supermarket checkout lines, and conscripted friends and shopkeepers. Alive with the passion of it all, she's yet to be turned down.
