The Art Of Comfort Eating With Pritisha Das

The Art Of Comfort Eating With Pritisha Das

Finding comfort in food is common to all, and it is part of a practice called emotional eating. Celebrating authentic Odia cuisines, Odia girl Pritisha Das is doing food blogging with the Instagram handle @The_art_of_comfort_eating. Software developer by profession, she found her love for food during her engineering days. Comfort foods have always helped us sail through bad times and quell negative or challenging thoughts. For Pritisha it is something that soothes the soul, whether that is through the cooking process or the eating or just the personal associations that a dish carries with it.

Recently NDTV Food featured some of her food pictures along with the stories of the food presented by her. During the Pakhala Day celebration last year she was felicitated at an event at Cuttack for her work in promoting Odia food.

My City Links caught up with her to find out more about Pritisha and her work, here are the excerpts.

How did it all begin?

During my engineering days here in Bhubaneswar, the cook in me was born to make my non-Odia friends happy who were staying away from their homes. As they are not getting the opportunity to have homemade food, I used to try and make different types of typical Odia dishes to recharge their taste buds. After my engineering, I got a job at an IT company and there also I used to cook for my colleagues and they appreciated my cooking. Being impressed with my knowledge and passion for food, they advised me to start food blogging. That’s how it started in 2019. I had very little time after work. So I was not able to make videos. That’s the reason I thought of focusing on my written content, which includes the history of the dishes I post. I don’t have a Facebook page for my blogging. I do it only on Instagram, and in fact, I joined Instagram only for this.

Who are the food influencers in your family?

Both my father and mother are working professionals. So most of the time it’s my grandmother who used to be with me at home when I returned back from school. I remember when I was in standard six I tried my hand in cooking for the first time and made a sandwich. Mobile phones were very rare in those times. My mom used to instruct me over our land phone and I used to try making new dishes at home. In my family, everyone is a foodie. They always wish to taste something different and unique. So being with them has made me who I am. They are very happy seeing my writings and the way I blog.

Tell us what is special in your blogging.

Forget about food blogging, a few years ago I was not even aware of blogging. After researching a lot and taking help from my friends I get to learn how to click a good picture and how to write crisp content with some exciting facts. I have gone through a lot of Odia cookbooks like ‘Raja Rasoi Anyakatha’. I also get a lot of input from the local friends who belong to the place where a certain dish is said to be born. For example, let’s talk about “Mudhi Mansa”. This has taken shape under the Mayurbhanj Kings, who saw it as the perfect ‘shikar meal’ and would often find a reason to indulge their guests with the delicacy. They used to carry mudhi with them while going hunting inside the deep forests or for war because it’s lighter in weight and is ready to eat. It’s actually a royal dish presented before the British for the first time.

How do you balance passion and profession?

It is really tough to manage both my passion and profession at the same time. But honestly, I don’t feel exhausted doing it. I do it because I enjoy doing this. I don’t do a brand collaboration for money; rather I prefer collaborating with good content creators. I mostly focus on Odia food and it’s my priority. At the same time, being a food lover, I don’t want to restrict myself to only Odia food. Sometimes I also try dishes from other states.

What is your take on the growing number of bloggers each day?

Most of the people are doing it to become famous but actually they don’t mean it or we can say they are not serious about it at all. They are not passionate about what they are doing and have zero ambitions. During the initial days of lockdown the social media handles were flooded with vlogs and all, but after one year they all vanished.

What are the main reasons behind Odia food not getting proper recognition according to you?

While Odisha is a state where using milk, curd or cheese in cooking is very common, still, there are people who say we are a poor state when it comes to our food. I just wonder how. We don’t have proper documentation for any of our cuisine till date, that’s why people think that we Odias only eat pakhala and nothing else even after knowing that our Lord Jagannath used to have so much variety of food. People even get confused between Odia and Bengali food. Whenever I want to explore our food more and create some archive or documentation for the same, the experts we have in our state are not cooperating much. They know the secrets and stories behind a special dish, but they will not share it at all. For example, we have not documented rasagola and a cold war happened for that.

Who are the popular chefs you follow?

I like and follow Ranveer Brar, who is very popular these days. His cooking includes no fancy items at all, rather he always focuses on cooking with the minimum ingredients we have at our homes. In Odisha, I have not got the opportunity to interact with chefs but yes I do follow the typical Nana (Local Cooks) we have, who used to cook during our family functions. I also take tips from them to cook Odia food.

Do you plan to quit your job someday and do full-time food blogging? What’s next?

No, not because I am worried about my earnings. I believe I have studied so much and I should use it and at the same time, I am also getting time for my passion. So I don’t need anything else. I have plans to start a venture on Odia food. It may be a cloud kitchen, a restaurant or even a small food truck. I also wish to participate in reality shows like Master Chef.