Everyday, most of us cook with rice, lentils, millets, mangoes, fish, spices, or leafy greens. Yet, we may not be aware of the origin of the ingredient, its seasonality, the labour required to cultivate it, the communities that value it, or how its meaning varies with place and time. For the quarter of July to September 2026, we ask: Can we cook with curiosity?
In the next three months, we want to further explore what an ingredient can reveal—including regionality, ecological relationships, community knowledge and practice, culture, nutrition, memory, and technique.
The ingredients we know of, and frequently use, are increasingly standardised—shaped by availability at grocery stores, restaurant menus, and online purchases. Our choices are swayed by the market: what is easily available, efficiently distributed, or algorithmically surfaced to us. Consequently, many regional, seasonal, wild, community-specific, and lesser-known ingredients are pushed further to the margins.
This quarter, we want to understand what is at stake when we lose ingredient diversity? It is an invitation to look closely at ingredients—both familiar and unfamiliar—to understand their distinct life. It is an invitation to be curious and attentive to the vegetables bought every week, the fruits marking a change of season, the grains stored in our kitchens, the spices shaping family recipes, the fish and meats carrying deep community knowledge, and the ingredients whose stories are often flattened, forgotten, or taken for granted.
Join the conversation this quarter to know more about:
By bringing this conversation to Local Food Clubs across 20-plus cities, we want to collectively interrogate, understand, and map desi ingredients across diverse contexts.
“Desi” encompasses all those ingredients that have become a part of Indian food tradition through trade, migration, adaptation, agriculture, seasonality, memory, and everyday practice. It includes a spectrum of foods—amaranth leaves, colocasia, jackfruit, tendli, mango, kokum, ragi, rice, mustard oil, saffron, mutton, dried and freshwater fish, and eggs, just to name a few.
“Desi” is neither restricted to ancient, indigenous, or hyperlocal ingredients, nor does it entail ingredients that are pure, superior, or untouched by external influence.
Our quarterly theme is spread across three months, moving across three broad realms. Here’s a breakdown of what you can expect:
July: Fruits and Vegetables
Exploring fresh produce in markets, home gardens, farms, forests, street carts, and kitchens—including fruits, vegetables, roots, tubers, flowers, mushrooms, and others.
August: The Desi Pantry
Digging into our pantry shelves: ingredients that are dried, stored, preserved, fermented—the backbone of everyday cooking. The desi pantry can encompass grains, flours, pulses, millets, masalas, chutneys, coffee, honey, jam and pickles, to name a few.
September: Fish, Meat, and More
Understanding what animal foods reveal about community knowledge, culture, caste, ecology, region, religion, memory, discomfort, and difference. This includes a range of ingredients from eggs, fish, and mutton to offal, bone broths, and preserved meats.
Know more about the questions we’re asking this quarter, and the narratives we’re trying to foreground:
Historian Priti Saxena discovered gular in Patna. Intrigued by its mythical narratives, she traces its life over time—including its regional names and recipes across the Indian subcontinent.
Rishaya Palkhivala shares why the Dadar railway platform in Mumbai is the mini-market of her dreams. She was introduced to wild foods here, and broaches the gap between tribal foragers and urban consumers.
What does it mean to be in tune with changing seasons? Janagiamma, a leader of the Indigenous Kurumba community in the Nilgiris, tells us that it’s good to eat millets and bamboo during the monsoons.
In a cookbook project, Bhagath Singh A. documents India’s Coromandel coast, diving into the ebbs and flows that define coastal food across the region—from the inhabitants’ lives to the cooking methods they follow, and the labour and ecology that ties their recipes together.
At a Local Food Club meetup in Goa, Gowri remembers her mother Ani through their shared ritual of ‘urula chor’—the perfect bite of rice with her favourite food combinations from childhood.
In Bengal’s kitchens, curdled milk becomes sandesh; vegetable peels become khosha bhaja and bata; and fish is relished from scale to tail. Suman Mahfuz Quazi writes about the history of Bengal’s zero-waste culinary culture—shaped by migration, scarcity, and famine.
From India’s southwest coast towards the east and north-east, Sohel Sarkar traces the vanishing ingredients and waning practice of pickling fish and meat— passed down orally over generations and largely absent from mainstream cookbooks.
For the Adi Pasi community in Arunachal Pradesh, growing regional millets like Job’s Tears is associated with mythology, medicine, ecology, language, and livelihood. Marina Dai reports from the Upper Siang district on shifting agricultural practices and a new generation’s efforts towards reviving the grain.
Discover more stories on food and labour in our reading list (coming soon).
Meet like-minded members over market walks, cooking together with desi ingredients, and sharing memories and meals.
Market visits to explore different localities and desi ingredients, engaging with elders or vendors.
City-wide conversations on WhatsApp that engage with diverse desi ingredients in local contexts.
Discussion and Reading Circles held online with experts from the field, blending conversation and learning.
Archival Activities to document market walks, desi ingredients, recipes, and reflections.
Other Activities and Prompts including a pantry shelf show-and-tell, recipe documentation workshops, and online community cooking sessions.
By the end of the quarter, we hope you leave with a deeper understanding of the life behind everyday ingredients you cook with, grow familiar with new / diverse ingredients alive in local markets, and with those at the risk of living on only in memory.
Sign up for the Local Food Club to be part of this dialogue.
Want to help us behind the scenes? Here are all the ways you can get involved.