Rukmini Srinivas has no need for recipe cards, measuring cups, or teaspoons. Her style of cooking is almost instinctive. It’s an Indian tradition—she knows just when to add that pinch of spice or that handful of herbs. She keeps the recipes she’s been using for decades in her head.
And she teaches that way, too: “I demonstrate. And as I demonstrate, I ask them to smell each and every ingredient, I pass the raw herbs around like coriander, curry leaves, ginger, and garlic. So I introduce each ingredient before I start cooking," Srinivas said.
Srinivas' classes at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education were a quick dive into the Indian palate, but after decades as a professor of human geography, she said teaching people how to cook took a little getting used to.
“When I went the first day, I didn’t know what to expect," Srinivas said. "There was just salt and pepper and oregano—that’s all there was! Indian food can’t be cooked with just salt and pepper. You need a whole host of ingredients to bring out that essential flavor!”
Srinivas feels comfortable teaching in front of a crowd, encouraging questions and participation with ease, but what she really prefers is cooking for a crowd.
The kitchen in her Arlington home is tricked out with all the modern amenities. It has sleek silver appliances, marble counter tops, and natural light pouring through the windows. But there are a few things—a heavy black iron skillet, worn with age, her own comfortable cotton sari—that wouldn’t be out of place in her mother’s kitchen in India back in the 1920s..
Srinivas has fond memories of her childhood. “We children grew up with the sights, the smells, the flavors of the kitchen.”
She said guests would often drop by, unannounced, just to say hello, because “hospitality meant not just come in, but have something to eat and drink, always, always.” Some of her earliest memories are of helping her mother prepare meals for their guests as they chatted:
“She’d say, can you chop this, would you cut these vegetables for me?" Shrinivas said. "And she’d ask my younger sister to peel the pea pods.”
All that time in the kitchen with her mother taught Srinivas that eating and drinking is essential to building community. She’s carried that lesson with her for 89 years. From London, England to Berkley, California she invited students, neighbors, famous people—pretty much anyone to come to her table for spirited discussions over her favorite dishes and experimental recipes.
“I love cooking," Srivinas said. "And I love—let me put it this way—feeding people.”
That, Srinivas said, it the most important thing a chef can do.
