Until it Felt Like Skin

 Recipes are not always passed down through paper and pen. For many, these practices are preserved through grandparents and persist today in their memory.

 Across stories shared with Recipes & Roots, grandparents repeatedly emerged as key figures in family tradition preservation. However, the roles that grandparents played in each family’s story differ significantly.

 For one Mauritian family with Tamil roots, this pattern was centered in a grandmother’s dholl puri. With heavy spices and an extraordinarily thin flatbread, this dholl puri is a unique family recipe, not comparable to any street food. The contributor notes that the secret was in the dough’s resting time, which was never shared with the family. Instead, the only clue the grandmother gave was an ambiguous command to wait until the dough resembled skin.

 And only after years of failed attempts did the contributor and their family understand what this meant.

 The grandmother's family originated in South India, bringing this dholl puri recipe with them overseas, and adapting it across decades. Their family used local Mauritian bird's eye chilies, small peppers with intense spice and fruity flavors, and homemade achards, tangy, pickled vegetables, to enhance the recipe.

 The contributor and their mother have relied on memories of watching her hands prepare the dish to recreate and pass down the recipe. While they have gotten closer, they have not yet been able to perfectly replicate the dholl puri. 

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 Yet, the contributor notes that perhaps some recipes are not meant to be replicated; they are meant to keep families cooking.