There's something about a grsandmother in the kitchen. They exude a confidence and deep knowledge more than any professionally trained chef. They just know. Now that knowledge is coming to your phone or tablet screen .
Regular contributor Tejal Rao wrote about this new phenomenom in yesterday's New York Times Food section. Grandmas are big now. There are many different clips on TIkTok and on YouTube right now where they're cooking along with offering advice.These woemn and their culinary stories are fascinating. One is the french series "The Grandma Project" wher directors feature their immigrant grandmothers. Ms. Rao compares these shorts to the opening scenes in Martin Scorsese's 1974 documantary "Italianamerican. In it his mother Cahterine sits on her couch and bemusedly asks what should she do ? Tell him how she makes sauce? She thought of Mrs Scorsese when she watched another older woman, Munise Bostanci. Mrs. Bustanci's grandaughter filmed her singing amournful Turkish song when she was simmering bulgur wheat with onions and potatoes for her lunch. Her attitude was similar to Scorsese's mom,a kind of bemused tolerance as she asked "Who would watch this? My children and grandchildren?"
It turns out many would watch her. They're called grandfluencers and they dot the TikTok and You Tube landscape, There are "Pasta Grannies" VIcky Bennison's gentle docuseries on the techniques of Italian grandmothers .It was so successful that it became a cookbook. Then there's Veg Village Food, family vidoes which features a seventy year old Punjabi woman Amaur Kaur who typifies the genre.. Mrs. Kaur has a simple set up in her couryard, a wood burining oven and an outdoor tap t wash vegetables. she cooks for 100(1) children in her village. sometimes more. She feeds them bamboo biryani, golgappa, a street snack made with mint water and puff of homemade dough . She also whips up eggplant pakoras and even pizza and milkshakes along with all kinds of twists on packaged noodles.. Mrs Kaur works steady and hardly speaks, except to identify the types of ingredients as she tosses them into pots and pans. Yet these home chefs also offer asides on their lifes from their late husbands to their grandchildren. Sometimes they made funny and sarcastic comments which crack up their filmaker grandkids.
Watch any of these shorts about grannies cooking. You'll learn more fromthem than from a cooking class. There are lessons on cooking, yes but also lessons about life.
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