Hope in an oven: on writer Saee Koranne-Khandekar’s digital fundraising cookbook

Culinary consultant and writer Saee Koranne-Khandekar’s digital fundraising cookbook is all about ‘non-lessons’

Culinary consultant and author Saee Koranne-Khandekar learnt cooking and baking by “osmosis...by being around”. She’s never received formal cooking lessons. It could explain why her books have appealed to me. Be it her debut Crumbs, which explored the world of breads, or her sophomore work Pangat, a treatise on Marathi cooking, her writing remains conversational. And that could be said of her latest project, From My Oven, an e-book created as a fundraiser for Ahmednagar-based non-profit Snehalaya, which managed to raise ₹12 lakh in 21 days. All it took were daily posts on her social media pages. Snehalaya, operational for three decades now, works with women, children and LGBTQI+ communities affected by HIV, AIDS, poverty, violence and sex trafficking. Thane-based Koranne-Khandekar’s philosophy, be it on her popular Instagram page (@skoranne) or in her writing, has been to make cooking a non-lesson. “When you instruct, it becomes a chore to be completed, not a life skill,” she says.