Oota Stories

Food, recipes and memories- from their “Mane” to yours!

Oota ayitha?

There is a lot wrapped in this simple question in Kannada which translates to “have you eaten?”; a veiled expression of care, concern and a sincere hope for wellbeing.

We often swap recipes for various reasons- to try something new, to experience a new place without leaving our kitchens or to simply step away from what is routine. How about trying out recipes for the wellbeing of someone else out there? Meet Oota– a food journal contributing to a bigger cause, rooted in this simple expression.

Oota is a volunteer-driven initiative to showcase recipes from the Baale Mane Girl’s Home in Gopalapura, Bangalore. Baale Mane helps build brighter futures for girls by providing them with a safe, healthy and happy home, education, life skills training and opportunities for further study and training. Oota hopes to share delicious and authentic recipes from the home to raise funds for the care of the girls. I spoke to Tessa Verity who founded for this project, and she shared her “Oota” journey with me.

The Oota Connection

Tessa is a London based designer who has experience designing for retail and hospitality environments. She currently works for a retail and strategy agency.

While working in London for an architectural firm, she began looking at NGO’s to volunteer for, when she was introduced to Baale Mane by her friends. “The home was looking for someone to work on the reconfiguration and expansion of the existing buildings. It was the perfect opportunity for me. Normally NGO’s look for different skill sets. To be able to use my design skills for a good cause was really appealing to me.  I had a conference call with the trustees on a Saturday and the following Monday, I went to work and quit my job.”

Tessa spent five weeks drafting proposals for a new building and rationalizing the existing space at Baale Mane. She went back to London to spend Christmas with her family but was not quite ready to say goodbye to Baale Mane and the girls. She came back to Bangalore in February 2017 as a general volunteer, and it was during this period that the idea of Oota began to take shape. “I worked on various projects as a general volunteer, but then realized that the food at Baale Mane was wonderful. No matter what we ate in the city of Bangalore, it was never as tasty or as authentic as what we ate at the home. Between us, we had many friends who enjoyed cooking and we love cooking as well. We thought it would be an interesting project to try and collect the recipes from the home and make into a cookbook.”

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Tessa shares that she spent five months collecting and collating content for the project. “I started collecting content about the typical recipes and the days in the lives of the people who contribute to the home. We wanted to set up a project which would share authentic recipes with the rest of the world. In the UK, Indian food is hugely popular, but people have a lack of knowledge when it comes to South and region-specific food. We hope that we are not only raising awareness about Baale Mane but also educating people about South Indian food.”

Website and Oota Products

The project is called “Oota” after the expression “oota ayitha”, commonly used at the home. As a part of this project, the Oota team launched their website www.ootastories.org in December 2017. Currently hosting several simple yet delicious everyday recipes like “tomato sambhar“, “smashed potatoes” and “spinach and egg bhurji”, the website is inspired by the Cook for Syria project- an initiative to raise money for Unicef’s Children of Syria fund. “We are sharing recipes from Baale Mane for people around the world to cook in their own homes. We hope that people will try these recipes, host a supper club, raise money and make a donation online. Oota aims to bring people into the Baale Mane kitchen, by cooking our recipes in their own homes.”

The Oota Supper Club Packs have been created for these group events. The packs contain four napkins, a tea towel, an exclusive recipe card and were made available for sale in the UK around mid-December 2017. The fabrics in these packs are designed by one of the girls from Baale Mane, Rekha, and they are hand block printed by Tharangini Studios in Bangalore. The packs have been stitched by the MITU Foundation, which provides employment opportunities for rural women and raises awareness towards menstrual hygiene. The Brinjal Curry and Chicken Curry packs represent the favourite recipes of Saraswathama, the cook at Baale Mane and Antoine Mary from Sangam– an organization which conducts study tours and runs a study centre in Silvepura, Bangalore close to the Baale Mane home. Oota is now also selling tote bags and packs of tea-towels to complement the Supper Club Packs, all made in the same, locally-sourced way.

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For the love of food

Tessa shares that the Oota journey has been a labour of love and many people contributed in bringing these recipes forward to the world.  “I set up Oota with the support of many wonderful and talented people, who have helped develop the brand, the graphics, tested recipes, proofread recipes and done so much more. Tiggy Allen, who is actively involved in the project, edits the recipes from a British point of view making sure they can be cooked in the UK.  There is a lot of work involved in documenting recipes in a rural area because everybody seems to cook intuitively. All of the recipes have been handed down through generations. There are no scales, and everything is really a handful of this and pinch full of that. It was wonderful for us to witness that, but we also had to translate the proportions into metric measurements to ensure the recipes were accessible.”

The Oota team also worked on the recipes to make sure they suit the UK palate and have alternatives suggested for ingredients which might not be easily available- all this without altering the authenticity of the recipes. Photographer Annelise Blackwood provided beautiful photographic content, while the Oota logo was designed by Sarah Walker, creating a modern take on the traditional Kannada letter form. Deenal Vallabh designed the product labels and recipe cards. FYI, her Instagram feed is a must follow if you love design.

The Oota Instagram page was what drew me to this project in the first place. Along with glimpses of the girl’s everyday lives, we are treated to visuals of behind the scenes activities in the kitchen. Like every home, food is an integral part of Baale Mane, and through Oota, it is possible for us to be part of their world.

“The kitchen is my favourite room of the house. There is something very relaxing about being in the kitchen, learning recipes, listening to the stories behind the recipes, knowing how our cook learnt to make some of these dishes. Some of our happiest times were spent sharing food stories in the kitchen,” says Tessa. Looks like in the case of Baale Mane too many cooks do not spoil the broth- they make the broth memorable.

If you are interested in contributing to Oota, buying a Supper Club Pack, or sharing your very own South Indian ‘Oota (Food) Story’, do drop them a message via their website. Stop by the Baale Mane website as well to know more about their mission and the people working hard to give these girls a place they call home and the chance of a brighter future.