Welcome to Lalkila Kitchen
Lalkila Kitchen is a recipe collection for Indians living abroad and everyone who shares their tables. It makes room for the food we remember and the food we cook now: regional dishes, family favourites, contemporary combinations and everyday meals shaped by life in other countries.
Many traditions and many ways of eating
India's food cannot be reduced to one region, religion, language or diet. This collection will grow through its many regional, religious, linguistic, Adivasi and family traditions. Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Christian, Jain, Buddhist, Jewish, Parsi and other food traditions all have a place, alongside mixed households and people whose cooking follows no religious practice.
Vegetarian dishes will sit alongside eggs, meat and seafood, with clear labels so readers can choose for themselves. We will preserve specific festival or community context when the source establishes it, without treating a single recipe as the voice of a whole community.
Cooking today and living abroad
Traditional food can bring a welcome feeling of home. It is one part of the collection. Bread, pasta, contemporary snacks and recipes influenced by other cuisines belong here too. A kitchen abroad can hold dal and macaroni, rice and toast, and use each without needing to call everything traditional.
Vegetables pulses and everyday cooking
- Toor dal fry with onion tomato and amchur
- Pan cooked paneer shashlik with capsicum and cream
- Bread poha with peas tomato and curry leaves
Eggs meat and seafood
- Egg and capsicum bhurji for breakfast or supper
- Dilpasand mutton korma with coconut and poppy seeds
- Shrimp curry with yoghurt tomato and cream
- Spicy pork curry with vinegar and coconut milk
Contemporary snacks and pasta
Something sweet
From the archive to the kitchen
The opening recipes draw on Joseph Paul's archive of food material assembled during work with restaurant and food businesses. Source and author credits are retained where known. Some recipes have been adapted for clearer instructions or present-day home cooking; the source notes identify those adaptations. These recipes are not presented as kitchen-tested by Lalkila.
This first collection is a beginning, not a claim of complete representation. As it grows, we will broaden its regional and community coverage as well as its contemporary cooking.