The Taste We Missed Until We Made It Again

I still remember those evenings when the kitchen would become the busiest place in the house.

Someone would be making coffee. Someone would be talking about their day. There would be the sound of vessels in the kitchen, a little conversation from the next room, and the unmistakable smell of something being fried.

And if it was vada, nobody really needed to be called.

We would somehow find our way to the kitchen.

The first batch was always the most exciting. Hot, crisp, fresh from the oil, with coconut chutney or sambar waiting nearby. Sometimes there was filter coffee too. Sometimes it was just vada and conversation. Nothing special was planned, yet those ordinary evenings somehow became the memories I carried with me.

I did not realise how valuable those moments were until I moved away.

I am talking about these memories without telling you who I am.

My name is Anananya. I grew up in Trichy, Tamil Nadu, where evenings like these were a normal part of life. Today, I live in the Netherlands, and somewhere between the life I grew up with and the life I have built here, I began to understand how much our everyday food is connected to our sense of home.

Living in Europe changes many things. The weather is different. The streets feel different. Our routines become different. Work takes up the day, evenings become quieter, and weekends often become the time when we slow down and cook something that reminds us of home.

But sometimes, even when you cook an Indian dish perfectly, you realise that you are not really looking for just the food.

You are looking for the feeling around it.

For me, vada brings that feeling back instantly.

Back in Trichy, making vada was never something that needed a grand occasion. Urad dal would be soaked and ground into batter, then mixed with onions, green chilli, ginger, curry leaves and spices. The consistency had to be just right—not too loose, not too heavy—so the vada would become crisp outside while staying soft inside.

And then came that familiar moment.

The batter touched the hot oil.

Sizzle.

That sound is difficult to explain to someone who has never grown up around it.

But for me, it means evening.

It means home.

It reminds me of standing around the kitchen waiting for the next batch. It reminds me of picking one while it was still too hot to hold properly. It reminds me of family conversations that had no real beginning or ending. It reminds me of those evenings when nobody was checking the time.

Here in the Netherlands, I sometimes miss those little things more than I miss the bigger ones.

Of course, I miss people. I miss places. I miss being able to step outside and feel completely familiar with everything around me.

But food has a strange way of bringing a small part of that familiarity back.

One evening, I decided to make vadas at home.

There was nothing extraordinary about it. I was simply craving that taste.

But when the first vada went into the hot oil, the kitchen filled with that familiar sound and aroma. For a moment, I was thinking about Trichy again. About those evenings. About the people around me. About how something as simple as a snack could hold so many years of memories.

That is when I realised something.

When Indians living across Europe cook the food they grew up with, they are not simply preparing a meal. Sometimes, they are recreating a small piece of their childhood.

A plate of vada can become a Sunday morning with family. An evening coffee can become a reminder of home. A familiar aroma can turn an ordinary kitchen in the Netherlands, Germany, or anywhere else in Europe into a place that suddenly feels a little closer to India.

And perhaps that is the beautiful thing about food.

It travels with us.

Our homes may change. Our surroundings may change. But the flavours we grew up with can still find their way back into our everyday lives.

For me, that familiar evening came back through vada.

And when I want to recreate that feeling without starting the entire batter preparation from scratch, Garam Foods Vada Batter makes it easier to bring freshly prepared South Indian vadas into my kitchen. It is a simple convenience, but the experience remains familiar—the hot oil, the crisp first bite, the chutney, the coffee and, most importantly, the memories that come with them.

Because sometimes, we don’t really miss a particular food.

We miss who we were when we were eating it.