Feast (Quantity Cooking for Krishna's Kitchen)

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This book has been a long time coming.

I started cooking for Sunday Feasts and festivals at Melbourne Mahaprabhu Mandir in the late '70s. It was my habit to write down what I'd cooked by keeping a record of the menus and recipes. My Dad had kept diaries, and little by little I was becoming my Dad. My motivation was to preserve these recipes for "future generations," though as a twenty-something year old, my concept of that was a vague one.

The feasts mounted up, and soon the notes filled clip-boards, then spring-bound folders. By the '80s, cooking in quantity had become a major part of my life. My notes were taking the form of a "big book-to-be." At the same time, I had started cooking at Gopal's Restaurant in Melbourne, teaching cookery classes and writing cookbooks, albeit in smaller quantities, starting with Great Vegetarian Dishes.

On a trip to America in the '90s I found myself in Denver where Sriman Apurva dasa and his wife, Kamalini devi dasi were living. I had heard about the famous Apurva and we met for prasadam at his place. Over lunch, Apurva told me that he was writing a book a collection of large-quantity recipes and I found that amazing, here was someone with the same motivations as myself. Apurva generously shared the manuscript with me, and I brought it home and included it in my now burgeoning collection of "big" recipes. Culinary orbits had started to converge. Around the same time I was invited to Stockholm to visit my friend and ex-Gopal's sous- chef Sunanda dasa at his hugely successful downtown Govinda's Restaurant. Sunanda had gathered large notebooks filled with recipes featured on his daily menu and he was also writing a book. I asked if I could have a copy of his manuscript, and he obliged.

My collection of recipes had become a big box of spring-bound folders. It even had an index, volume numbers, and chapters, and now included Apurva's and Sunanda's collections. Each time I moved house, even overseas, this heavy box came with me. But by now it was approaching 30 years since I started that collection; my other cookbook writing and my teaching had now taken priority in my life, and I kept this project on the "back burner." However, unrelenting time, as it does, had moved imperceptibly forward. My seventh age was approaching. What to do about the Big Cookbook?

In early 2019, a breakthrough: Krishna sent a publisher! Apurva approached his friend Mayapriya devi dasi from Bookwrights Press, and she was inspired to publish our book.

Mayapriya recalls, "When Apurva contacted me, I was working on publishing a A Bond of Love: Srila Prabhupada and His Daughters, so I was very much in the mood of inspiring future generations. This book would be another big project, but I thought a feast cookbook that also included instructions, stories and tips from veteran ISKCON cooks would be an important contribution from our generation to generations to come. So we began."

Things moved very fast from there on. Apurva invited in Gopati dasa, a revered and expert chef from early Chicago and Detroit days who had gone on to build an incredible career in the culinary arts. Gopati brought his wonderful vision, his professionalism, some recipes and his wise counsel to our book.

Feast is not concerned with ordinary feasts. This book is about transcendentally extraordinary feasts, feasts of Krishna's mercy.

The Sanskrit word for mercy is "prasada," and Krishna's devotees know that His prasada - His mercy - is essential for their spiritual progress. "If one is serious about going back home, back to Godhead," Srila Prabhupada writes in his translation to Srimad-Bhagavatam 5.5.15, "he must consider the mercy of the Supreme Personality of Godhead the summum bonum and chief aim of life."

Krishna's mercy comes in many forms, and it's our great fortune that His mercy in the form of sri krishna-prasada is readily available through the astonishingly simple act of offering and eating it (or, as we say, honoring it for once it's been accepted by Krishna we understand that it's nondifferent from Krishna Himself). Srila Prabhupada's Hare Krishna movement has become internationally famous for its dedication to prasada in the form of delectable and variegat- ed vegetarian food that's been offered to Krishna with love and devotion, and feasts of Krishna prasada are integral to Srila Prabhupada's Hare Krishna culture. And so they should be. After all, Srila Prabhupada is a follower of Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu, who said of prasada: "It is to be understood that the spiritual nectar of Krishna's lips has touched these ordinary ingredients and transferred to them all their spiritual qualities. A fragrance and taste that are uncommon and greatly enchanting and that make one forget all other experiences are attributes of Krishna's lips." (Caitanya-caritamrita, Antya 16.112-13)

As recounted by Sri Caitanya's biographer, Srila Krishnadasa Kaviraja, after Sri Caitanya said this, the many devotees with Him loudly chanted the holy name of Hari and tasted the prasada they'd been given. As they tasted it, their minds became mad in the ecstasy of love. Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu kept telling those distributing the prasada, "Give the devotees more! Give them more!" And gradually, all the devotees became filled up to the neck with krishna prasada.

In the early days of the Hare Krishna movement, money was scarce. As a result, the new, young devotees often ate austerely all week. On Sundays, however, in every Hare Krishna temple around the world, all energy and resources were devoted to making lavish prasada feasts for the public, which the devotees also relished. Those feasts were reminiscent of the feast Krishna told the residents of Vrindavan to make for Govardhana-puja: "Prepare rice, dal, then halava, pakora, poori, and all kinds of milk preparations, such as sweer rice, rabri, sweetballs, sandesa, rasagulla, and laddu." (Krishna Book, chapter 24) The devotees didn't make all these dishes every week, but over time they'd make them all, plus chutneys, kachoris, fries, brahmana spaghetti, barats, every kind of vegetable dish imaginable, fruit drinks and smoothies, cakes, malpouras, and the many other dishes you'll read about in these pages. Often it was the Sunday feasts that kept the fledging devotees going from one week to the next.

During the Mayapur-Vrindavan festivals from 1974 to 1977, temple cooks from around the world met in small groups to discuss feast preparation and prasadam lore. It was in one such group in Mayapur in 1974 that I first met Kurma Prabhu. His enchanting description of preparing many hundreds of barats baked in buttermilk for feasts in Australia stayed with me for decades. Afterwards, when he wrote his books and created TV shows, I reflected on that encounter and understood he was a natural. Not only because he was talented, but also because he was empowered by his devoted service to Srila Prabhupada.

Apurva Prabhu and I connected for the first time a year later in Vrindavan, 1975, when we cooked together for the installation of Krishna-Balarama. Becoming fast friends, we toured the holy sites in our spare time outside the kitchen. Later, when Apurva approached me about this book, it rekindled memories of what it was like to prepare feasts during my years in temples. The recipes that I contributed to this book are from those days. Cooking traditional dishes for the Deities in temples, for Sunday feasts, and producing festivals was foundational for everything 1 have done since. The experience was unique and well beyond what most chefs learn in cooking schools.

Early in this book project, I began a side activity of interviewing devotees about prasadam, sometimes together with our publisher, Mayapriya devi dasi, who later extracted vignettes from these interviews and skillfully wove them into the fabric of this book. Each devotee shared unique memories, and all were consistent in their love for, and gratitude to ISKCON's original cook, Srila Prabhupada.

While Srila Prabhupada was physically present, Sunday Feasts were a significant part of the temple sankirtan program. Everyone pitched in to prepare, serve and attend the feast. We worked together to share with the fortunate attendees the magical experience of devotional life by putting forward the best we could offer. Every week we worked to please Krishna so that His prasadam would delight and inspire the guests, sealing the deal with extraordinary culinary impressions even if little from the lecture or kirtan might be retained. Srila Prabhupada described prasadam as his "secret weapon" which provided a tangible taste of the spiritual world.

In those days, cooking and serving feasts for Krishna was an effort comparable to a theatrical production, where everyone played a collaborative role to create a seamless presentation. Not only that, but the temple kitchen was also an ideal setting for fostering life-long friendships and working relationships centered around service to Krishna.

Preparing beautiful-looking, delicious and sumptuous-tasting feast prasadam is undoubtedly an art form; but this book is more than just recipes; it is a glimpse into the devotional mindsets of Srila Prabhupada's original cooking disciples and their followers. The power of prasadam lies in the pure heart of the cook, to become, as Srila Prabhupada said, "a transparent via medium," where the mercy and grace Srila Prabhupada taught us are presented as is. I encourage you to read the book in this spirit.

Please consider this volume to be a portal into Krishna's kitchen, a glimpse of the joy of preparing and serving feasts. Come with us, replicate these magnificent offerings yourself and participate in Srila Prabhupada's kitchen parampara!