Pop Up #5: Misti South Asia
by Tananya Prankprakma, with photos taken by Yoshi and Tananya
The first thing you should know about this event is that the prospect of head-cheffing it made me ask myself a few questions, most of which were related to the fact that I am not Indian.
The question of authenticity usually comes up for me when I think about Thai food. Growing up, I was blessed enough to have parents who were good at cooking, which I suppose is something that you learn when you want the food you grew up with but end up on the other side of the world. We liked to go out to eat, but our selection was never Thai, save for the occasion when we would go to their friend’s restaurant. Whatever they could make, we could make at home.
For a long time, I would judge these places (without having tried them), for not being “authentic” and pandering to the suburban west Michigan palette. Eventually, I realized that they just had to fit whatever market they were catering to, and that depending on the occasion, authenticity can be a very small part of what makes a meal memorable. Of course, it’s good to pay attention to the source of your dishes and ideas, but I like to think that great food and great company is most of what you need.
Which is to say that I eventually accepted my aforementioned questions as non-issues and moved on, focusing on how to guide the event itself. Shoutout to the lovely Sangita for being a wonderful help throughout the process. With that, here’s a quick recap of our collaboration with MISTI India.
2/12/2023
Three weeks before the event, ideation happened! Ideation is always quite chaotic, but we eventually settled on a menu. For the starter, we would try a thali-style (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thali) dish with chutneys and roti, and for the main, Maya kindly let us borrow her mom’s ambur biryani recipe. The dessert would be bruleed kheer and kulfi, and the drink would be sattu sharbat.
2/27/2023
Prep started the Monday before the event. It was chaotic as usual, and for the most part I’ll just let the few photos I managed to get speak for themselves. Also as usual, we did manage to find enough space on our cutting boards and escape any sort of alarm. We also had a few new members join us for this popup! Shoutout Riley, Renee, Maya, Harry, and Ella for diving headfirst into MINCE with this event.
Starter team got some practice making the chapatis they had decided to make, and they also locked in the flavors they wanted for their chutneys. For the main, we made one batch of Maya’s mom’s delicious biryani recipe, which we very happily sampled. Drink team actually decided to change up their original plan and decided to make a sweeter and more straightforward rose lemonade that would be more widely enjoyable to our guests.
Later on in the week, Harry and Alayo did some further work on dessert, and on Wednesday we decided to go with a mango kulfi to go with the kheer.
3/3/2023
The day before the event was hectic as usual, but really nothing out of the ordinary. We had decided earlier on in our ideation process to use banana leaves to serve some of our dishes in, so a few people were working on making a quantity of banana leaf bowls. There were also some issues with not being able to acquire enough cooking vessels (oven-safe pots) on time for the main, so that also slowed us down a bit. Cook team was there until 11, which is not the worst we’ve ever done on time, but it was definitely a fight to make it all the way through. Here’s what I played to fuel our madness.
3/4/2023
mince <3
Finally, the day of the event came! For the popup, we were in the BC Porter Room, which we had used once before, also for a collaboration with MISTI (link blog). Behind the scenes, it was quite chaotic (struggling to come up with new words), with people running back and forth between New House and BC to make sure everything was served on time.
Head-cheffing gave me more of a look into what goes into a popup than I ever asked for, and I think it’s better to omit most of the details. But surrounded by great food and great company, there’s nothing more I could ask for:3
figuring out our projector set up
