Book Review: India’s Most Legendary Restaurants

Across the length and breadth of the country, India has one of the richest, most diverse food cultures anywhere in the world. For committed gastronomes, some of the most authentic, soul-satisfying food experiences can often be found in people’s homes. But these aren’t always accessible and certainly not to everyone. And that’s where restaurants come in – almost every city in India has a selection of eateries that have made a name for themselves over the years, specialising in the local cuisine, with the flavours amped up and taken to whole new level, achieved via a mix of carefully selected ingredients and cooking techniques developed over many years, sometimes many decades. And the best part is, you’re just as likely to find such legendary eateries inside a five-star hotel as on a nondescript streetside corner.

Book Review: Forgotten Foods

Edited by Tarana Husain Khan, Claire Chambers and Siobhan Lambert-Hurley, Forgotten Foods: Memories and Recipes from Muslim South Asia is a delectable anthology of essays where the authors write about food – the food they remember enjoying as children, the food of their community, the food that reminds them of home. And, yes, it’s important to document these stories because the food that’s written about here is very much part of the authors’ unique, individual identities, inseparable from the memories of who they are, the places they’ve been.

‘While heritage foods still abound in the streets and kitchens of South Asia, it may just be a matter of time before many of these historic dishes and culinary traditions, especially of Muslim provenance, pass into oblivion. In Forgotten Foods, historians, literary scholars, plant scientists, heritage practitioners, writers and chefs come together to document precious stories and memories, histories and recipes in a valiant endeavour to stem this lamentable tide,’ says the publisher’s note. ‘The culinary diversity showcased in the book not only comes as a delightful surprise, it also proves just how profoundly Muslim kitchens have reshaped alimentary practices, enriching South Asian food and making it what it is today,’ it adds.

Book Review: Digesting India

I dislike the word ‘foodie,’ a vastly overused term that sounds affected and silly. But I do love good food. Often, while having breakfast, I ask the wife what we’re having for lunch, at lunch I ask about dinner and at dinner I ask about the following day’s breakfast. It’s exasperating for her and, indeed, what she says is true: all I ever do is think about food, which includes ingesting new and interesting forms of sustenance, watching restaurant reviews on YouTube and, yes, reading books that are about food. And one of those books is Zac O’Yeah’s Digesting India, which I first spotted on the Speaking Tiger (the company that has published this book) website, and subsequently got a copy to read.