Food blogger Vernika Awal is a Punjabi, "displaced from Punjab". In the last 27 years, she has lived everywhere from Dehradun in Uttarakhand, to Assam and Mumbai. She recently moved to Delhi. This peripatetic upbringing meant that Awal could never really connect with her roots, or the foods that grew in her home soil. "While I am familiar with the Punjabi dishes made in our kitchen, I didn't know why we cooked what we did," she says.

The possibility of the legacy being lost on the generation after hers, prompted her to start the #DelectablePunjab hashtag on her Instagram handle @delectable_reveries, last year. The idea was to share the many influences of Punjab's rich food tradition, how the community's meals evolved post Partition, and to debunk the popular narrative of Punjab being the land of butter chicken and dhabe da mutton. "These dishes are not prepared in a majority of Punjab's homes. Sixty per cent of the state is vegetarian; they don't even eat eggs," says Awal. "I wanted to showcase our real cuisine."