Vintage Parsi recipes can now enjoy a revival thanks to retired chartered accountant and secretary of the Borivli and Suburban Zoroastrian Association Khurshed Pastakia. He has translated around 125 recipes from the venerable 19th century tome on Parsi cooking, Meherbai Wadia’s Vividh Vani. Many of the dishes include meat, fish and eggs but vegetarian recipes are also available. While there is no section on sweet dishes, a dodhi no murrabbo (preserve made from bottle gourd) and a dudhpak (milk pudding) do pop up.
Cover of the original Vividh Vani (l); abridged version
"I did it basically for myself,” he told Parsiana, when the soft copy of the translations were noted on social media. He said he was later persuaded to put these up on the Facebook group Parsis Exchange Recipes (PER) for all to enjoy. The comments by users of PER are largely appreciative. "Great effort,” said one. "Thank you for saving a part of our heritage,” said another. "Salute to your hard work,” stated yet another.
Perhaps one failing of the compilation is that Pastakia does not include weights and measures while detailing the cooking process. "Quantities are mostly left to judgment as older measures are not understood,” caveats the cover of the 53-page compilation. When Wadia wrote her two-volume tomes, the metric system was not prevalent, and measures were mostly in tolas, seers and maunds.
Wadia’s labor of love, written in Gujarati, includes eight types of akuri, 76 varieties of pickles (including nine versions of gor-keri alone), 36 flavors of ice cream, 60 ways to cook eggs, 15 ways to make omelets and 32 for cutlets; 27 kinds of custards, 57 cakes, not including 17 cheesecakes. And this is only a partial listing of her 2,180 recipes (see "Vintage viands,” Parsiana, August 7, 2016). Boston resident and cookbook author Rita Kapadia had made available reprints of the Gujarati originals in 2018 (see "Reprinting culinary heritage,” Parsiana, October 21, 2018).