Last year’s Indian Food Festival was overwhelmed when some 800 people turned up to sample authentic Indian cuisine, so this year a team of volunteers will help plate food to an expected 1,500 festival goers.
Anjali Puri is driving the festival, which is one of several Indian events she is organising in a bid to help the local, expanding Indian community stay in touch with their culture and also to showcase their culture to the wider community.
The festival is being held at Saxton Oval Pavilion on Sunday, 23 June, with tickets sold for a buffet inside and food carts selling Indian food outside.
Anjali says the buffet-style cuisine inside the pavilion will help overcome the challenges last year of trying to serve dishes as well as explain the ingredients and background to each dish.
It was only after she migrated to New Zealand five years ago that she realised just how much she loved her country, its culture and the family values. She knew others felt the same, which led to the Diwali celebration for the public at Founders Park. Three thousand people attended that last year and she says they are expecting possibly 5,000 this year when it is held in October.
Last year she formed a trust to make it easier to seek funding for future Indian events and her plans keep expanding. She now has a weekly ‘Gettogether’ for the local Indian community which she estimates is somewhere between 700 and 1,500 people, and is already planning a newsletter to promote small Indian businesses to newcomers.
“It’s easier immigrating to big cities where there’s so many opportunities, but it’s harder in smaller places. You have to work harder, but there’s also all those opportunities because it’s a blank canvas.”
Anjali also wants the wider community to know that Indian culture is more than just “performances and Bollywood movies”, which is why the Indian Food Festival is not just food, but includes displays of colourful saris, paintings and jewellery.
Food is the focus though and she says Indian cuisine is all about the aromatic spices, which is why her pantry is packed with Indian spices, sought from Indian food shops and packaged in small quantities to keep them fresh.
“It’s about the spices and how you use those spices. If something is supposed to go in at the end of the cooking and you put it in at the beginning, it will make a difference.”
Tickets for the buffet and also a spice information session are available here.
