On Making Samosas and Gujiya with Nitya Jain
I met Nitya Jain, the founder of Beyond Curry, through Leandra Blei, a fellow photographer who does a lot of work to foster connections and share useful information with small-business owners and creatives here in Austin. After mentioning The World in a Pocket, she connected me to Nitya right away. We made plans to cook together, and I was stoked that I would finally learn to make samosas, which has been on my pocket-list for a long time, and gujiya, which I had only tried once during the Indian-(ish) photoshoot in Dallas.
Around the same time Leandra connected me to Nitya, business picked up for me in a big way, and I had to put The World in a Pocket on the backburner. If work had gotten busy like that before I had a baby, it’s possible that I would have been able to meet up with Nitya and learn to make gujiya and samosas on a slow day between jobs, or on a Saturday afternoon, but navigating time to work on a passion project with a baby and a business to grow is a new frontier for me.
Pocket foods are an excuse to be in the moment with someone. When Lauren and I started this project a few years ago, I imagined slow afternoons sitting around a table making dumplings, late-night folding samosa sessions, empanada gossip gabs, all followed by a meal together with new friends.
So putting The World in a Pocket on the backburner earlier this year first meant making plans with Nitya, then postponing them. Then, when my husband lost his job in March, cancelling those postponed plans because I was taking any job that came my way to make sure we would stay afloat, and spending the rest of the time panicking that we would not. I think we rescheduled 3 or 4 times before Nitya and I met IRL.
Once we finally convened in her kitchen, I was crunched for time. I had an hour and forty-five minutes to hang before I needed to be home to Maya so Jason could get ready for a meeting with another recruiter. When I arrived, Nitya had the dough and filling prepped for gujiya and samosas, and we got straight to work, stretching green spinach dough over spicy potatoes, and puff pastry over a mixture of sweet nuts and mawa, all while urgently trying to get to know each other, knowing I’d have to leave at approximately 1:30 to get back to my baby.
I set a timer that would go off 15 minutes before I was supposed to leave, and in that last 15 minutes, Nitya baked a pan full of gujiya in the oven, while I finished folding samosas before she fried them up, as I scarfed down a sandwich her husband Saddat had thoughtfully picked up for us on his way home. After my sandwich, Nitya offered me a samosa and a gujiya to try, just as the timer alerted me that it was time to go. I tried them. I don’t remember how either tasted because I was too busy shoving my camera in the bag and finding my shoes to walk out the door.
As I was leaving, Nitya graciously sent me home with a sheet pan full of gujiya and samosas for me to photograph the finished pockets when I had the time. I realized immediately on my ride home that I couldn’t remember the way the gujiya actually tasted (and I do have that second stomach for sweets), so during a red light I reached into the passenger-side floorboard where I had placed the sheet pan and grabbed a still-warm flaky pastry full of toasted nuts laced with ghee and mawa, a condensed dried milk used in many Indian pastries (postpartum diet, anyone?) “Damn, this is good”, I thought. Would be even better with a cup of tea… Green light. Go. Flaky crumbs in my lap, shocking (some things never change).
I rushed home and Jason handed Maya off to me so he could get ready to go, leaving the samosas and gujiya on the counter to cool before I put them away with plans to photograph them during Maya’s nap time so we could be clear to eat them.
After eating spinach and potato samosas for breakfast by myself every day until they were gone-- err, not technically by myself if we count that Maya definitely cut a tooth on a cold one that week, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was terribly wrong with the way I showed up to make samosas and gujiya with Nitya.
I thought I was here for the cooking sessions with new friends to be long enough to learn about your grandmother, long enough to learn something I hadn’t planned to. Showing up for an hour and a half and hastily shooting the process before taking food home and eating it mostly by myself after photographing it some more is not what I had in mind for TWINAP, and I’m not sure it is the best way to make friends, either.
It’s hard to describe my feelings about the short time I had making samosas and gujiya with Nitya, but I can say for sure that I felt embarrassed. And that sort of reiterated something I had started to realize about my new role as a mother around the same time. I just don’t have as much time as I used to, which means I can’t share as much of myself all at once, because a big part of me now belongs to my baby.
Thankfully, Nitya didn’t hold the same expectations for Beyond Curry as a way to connect with people through food. I don’t think she was disappointed in the way I zoomed in and out of her kitchen that day. In fact, when I emailed her to ask a few questions about the recipes she shared with me, she also asked if I wanted to come over and have some chai, but “would I please bring my baby.” She is also the mother of a 9-year-old boy, and I often get the sense that she understands this new role I am trying to navigate better than I do.
“In fact, when I emailed her to ask a few questions about the recipes she shared with me, she also asked if I wanted to come over and have some chai, but “would I please bring my baby.”
It’s October now, and the first time I met Nitya was when she showed me how to make gujiya and samosas in her kitchen back in April. Since then, I have gotten to know her story, her family and her food. I know my fantasy of long cooking sessions will happen eventually because she has become one of those friends I know will stick around. Nitya was wise enough to recognize the season of life I am in now, and encouraged me to honor the time I have with my baby while she’s still tiny without carrying around a bunch of unnecessary guilt.
Aside from the work I have been doing for Tribeza to shine a light on local eateries in Austin making pockets food (hello, Austin in a Pocket!), and a long-overdue intro to Robin Beltran The Black Vegan Company (it’s coming when it’s coming, I promise!), TWINAP really has been on the backburner for me. And the truth is no one but the voice in my head is demanding an explanation for why I haven’t been able to meet the goals I set for myself and this project this year. I am working on finding a way to quiet that voice and embrace the new normal for me.
Navigating life as a new mom is no walk in the park, and I don’t have the answer to “how to run a passion project successfully while also working and mothering full time”. These days, things just move a lot slower. I am here for it. The only marathon dumpling sessions I have these days are on Friday nights, sitting across from the table with my husband in our pajamas after Maya goes down for the night, catching up on our week together. Our next Friday night dumpling situation will likely be Nitya’s recipe for aloo samosas with spinach dough, because making solid a recipe from a friend is one of my favorite ways to be in this world.
