It took a village to make those homemade treats my grandmother made for us daily. My journey to discover this, through her own words, and why I will never be able to recreate it the exact same way
Words by Monisha Cardoso; Art by Shweta Lia Matthew
My grand-aunt Emilia was a wonderful cook. Like all true cooks, she was enthusiastic not just about the process of cooking, but about feeding people, and, then, having fed them, about narrating her recipes to them, in rigorous detail, so they could go forth and reproduce it in their own kitchens if they were so inclined. You’d think this would mean that as her grand-niece, I’d have a treasure trove of recipes to see me through life, but as often happens, writing down her recipes, always an item on my holiday to-do list, remained just there, in my head, uncrossed, until it was too late.
This is probably why I jumped at the prospect of the project that my father had in mind. While visiting my grandmother, he had come across a handwritten notebook titled somewhat grandiosely, “Recipes from the House of Pereira”. He was quick to suggest that we embark upon a father-daughter project of translating these recipes, which were originally scribbled in Portuguese, to English.
The idea had a nice ring to it. The notebook was dated back to sometime in the ’40s, which meant that my grandmother probably…
