A Taste of India: The Definitive Guide to Regional Cooking, by Madhur Jaffrey
This is one of my all-time favorite books on food; I'm reviewing it because I recently re-read it. It's a survey of India's regional cooking, with recipes and photos. I have not tried the recipes as Indian cooking is really difficult if you don't have a background in it and know what dishes are supposed to taste like because you once ate them at someone's grandma's house; your results, by which I mean my results, are inevitably disappointing. So I am discussing this as nonfiction, not as a cookbook.
Jaffrey's prose is wonderful and her eye is sharp. She writes about food as one should, as inextricable from culture, people, and place. She also brings in relevant history. When she writes about places I've been to and dishes I've eaten, it's so vivid and matches so well with my own experiences that it made me feel like I'd traveled back in time. (It was written in 1985, so she's writing about the same time that I was in India.) If you want to take a virtual tour of a world that doesn't quite exist any more, if for no other reason than the passage of time, you could not do better.
All cuisines are regional, but India's are really regional, and in America at least, about 95% of them never got exported. Even having traveled in India, gotten invited to people's homes, and eaten a lot, I only heard of maybe half or a third of the dishes she mentions, and only ever tried one in twenty. But at least I got to vicariously experience them via her luscious descriptions.
It's a gorgeous book in every way. If you enjoy food or travel writing at all, I can't recommend it highly enough. It will transport you.
A Taste of India
Crossposted to https://rachelmanija.dreamwidth.org/2222296.html. Comment here or there.
Jaffrey's prose is wonderful and her eye is sharp. She writes about food as one should, as inextricable from culture, people, and place. She also brings in relevant history. When she writes about places I've been to and dishes I've eaten, it's so vivid and matches so well with my own experiences that it made me feel like I'd traveled back in time. (It was written in 1985, so she's writing about the same time that I was in India.) If you want to take a virtual tour of a world that doesn't quite exist any more, if for no other reason than the passage of time, you could not do better.
All cuisines are regional, but India's are really regional, and in America at least, about 95% of them never got exported. Even having traveled in India, gotten invited to people's homes, and eaten a lot, I only heard of maybe half or a third of the dishes she mentions, and only ever tried one in twenty. But at least I got to vicariously experience them via her luscious descriptions.
It's a gorgeous book in every way. If you enjoy food or travel writing at all, I can't recommend it highly enough. It will transport you.
A Taste of India
Crossposted to https://rachelmanija.dreamwidth.org/2222296.html. Comment here or there.