Why cooking with a loved one is the best recipe for success in the kitchen
The couple knows how to play to their strengths. In the early days, shy and unassuming Kanchan led the kitchen while bubbly Asumi ran the service, carrying their infant daughter in a carrier, charming diners and explaining Nepali dishes she didn’t fully understand herself. With the launch of Chiyaba, their tea house that Asumi runs entirely, they now have separate yet connected workplaces. “Earlier, we were two bosses in one kingdom,” Asumi smiles. “Now, we’re finally like business partners.” Despite it all, the Adhikaris’ restaurants are family businesses—emphasis on family.Cooking together might just be one of our most primal behaviours, dating back to the Neolithic period, which started around 10,000 BC. Even today, the kitchen is a site of community and intimacy, where people come together hoping to find new dimensions to their friendship in a rising loaf of bread or resolve arguments while taking turns to stir a pot of simmering dal. Yet, no two people do it alike: communal cooking is a practice with as many unique variations as there are types of dumplings around the world. For Kusuma and Nicole Juneja, a mother-daughter duo from New Delhi, sharing space in the kitchen is how they healed from the grief of a shared loss. “Like most moms and daughters, we are impatient with each other,” says Nicole. “But after my dad passed away, food became the thing that made us happiest. It shifted the equation from parent-child to friends.”Kusuma and Nicole Juneja play hostesses during their biannual supper clubs at home. Photographed by Rin Jajo.
