You know that feeling of knowing somebody really well even though you may not have met them personally yet? Often happens in my line of work, being a freelance journalist. Thanks to social media you tend to know a lot about them and conversation then becomes much easier, even if its the first time you are chatting.

That's exactly how I felt when I chatted with Kalyan Karmakar for close to an hour on the phone for the first time. I began following Kalyan right from the early days of his blog, Finely Chopped. Over the years, I may not have been as consistent in reading his posts but I did follow, from a distance, his journey as a food blogger - his travels, his food walks and the accolades he received and more. And so it was with great anticipation that I looked forward to his book - the Travelling Belly

I was among those that pre-ordered the book and was quite surprised when I received the copy much before the scheduled date of release. And then received a second copy which turned out to be the one that I paid for! Assuming here that the first one came directly from the publisher, though I never heard from anyone to confirm it! Anyways, I digress. Immediately I dove into the book...

The Travelling Belly is a collection of Kalyan's food experiences, memories and his recommendations on where to eat and what to eat in 10 cities, beginning with Kolkata, the city of his childhood and ending with Mumbai, the city he calls home now. Right off, this is perhaps the first book on food which talks of restaurants, the non-star kinds, from deep-inside-the-bylanes-of-a-city hole-in-the-wall kinds to the brick and mortar, family run places that have survived the test of time and then some. Among all the books on food focusing on the preservation of cuisines and the sharing of recipes (which are all great in their own right), this here has a uniqueness of its own.

So getting down to it, the book is quite a read at 300 pages, with each city getting its due, Mumbai more so than the rest, but naturally. All of the experiences are based on Kalyan's discoveries in the cities he visited on work or for other reasons, which is by and large exactly how most food bloggers go about gathering their experiences. What I liked about the documenting of these experiences is that there is almost always a backstory - not historical in terms of the cuisine all the time, but more about the people that man the counters, that sweat it out behind the wood fire and those that you make friends with when you become a regular.

I love this because if I take one of those food walks that are so thoughtfully included at the end of every city in the book, I have a personal connect to fall back on which may be mighty useful when I am trying to score that Raspberry at Britannia.

What also gets underlined in the book ever so often is the power of social media - from helping Kalyan find places in cities, to meeting people who share the love for food, for the snowball effect that such encounters have and more. In fact, what endeared the book to me was seeing so many names that I know personally or at least feel I do, thanks to social media - remember that familiarity thing I mentioned at the beginning. Its just that nice feeling of seeing the name of good friend Monika Manchanda with whose family Onam lunches and BBQ parties are so much fun!Or seeing names like Rhea Mitra Dalal, Kurush Dalal, and several others and feeling connected.

On the other hand, I personally find that the book makes for a very linear read, with it being more a compilation of blog posts rather than going beyond the blog which I would have loved for it to do. Perhaps a little more of a story style narrative, and not the staccato approach of visiting a place, a small experience of the food, the process of ordering, sharing tables and the like... especially when selection of places, ordering, sharing tables and minimal food descriptions are repetitive. This fits perfectly in a blog post since your reading is usually a short experience, but not in a book which you spend a lot more time with. Something squarely for the editors to consider for edition 2 maybe. And also, some work on the tips that are included, a majority of them are repetitive in the connection with the piece they follow or a little too obvious to warrant being a tip in itself.

Now that being said, I still like the book and it will be the first thing I will turn to when I visit any of the cities covered. It makes for the perfect guide to narrow down on places, mostly popular and a few off beat, to visit especially when you have just a few days on hand and don't really want to spend time searching for places. You can definitely trust Kalyan's choices because he has done his homework, has trudged out there and found the places and bottom line - loves his food. He also makes it a point to suggest places that he may not have visited but has heard highly and sometimes not too highly off as well. The choice is vast and left to you.

I love reading books on food - in fact the more it delves into the history and culture of things, the more I enjoy it. And that is why Mrs LC's Table by Anoothi Vishal hit quite a few right notes with me. Mrs LC's Table is Anoothi's view point of the culinary world of the Kayasth community based on memories of her grandmother's heavily laden table. The book traces the lineage of Kayasth food as we know it today through anecdotes of growing up with a doting grandmother.
Through the book, you get an anthropological point of view of a food culture's evolution. Now that may sound very academic in nature, but the flow of language in this book is simple, informative and very personal. Anoothi, in an interview with me on this book, describes her style of writing as one that firmly believes food is a part of a larger cultural context. "You cannot look at food in isolation and it’s also not only about consumption. So my take on food always comes with a larger perspective and it has to be placed in a cultural or a sociological context. I also now specialize in tracing links. I like food history and I trace links between regions or communities and try and see how a particular dish has travelled down from wherever, where it has landed and what is its current manifestation".

And that is why you will read about the Muslim influence on Kayasth food and of elaborate descriptions on Kaccha khana and Pakka khana in this book. You will relive your grandma's love for seasonal produce. The book delves into how Kachri came to be used as tenderizer and the uniqueness of mock meat dishes comprising of a core ingredient of lentils that was developed for the vegetarian women of the community to indulge in meat-like preparations. In fact, the Dal ke Kofte recipe is on my to-do list!
In Anoothi's words you will find that the book touches on various aspects of the Kayasth food culture. It takes a look at how art, culture and music were an inherent part of everyday life and it is seen in the creation of dishes such as the Badam Pasanda and Yakhni Pulao. 

Another aspect the book touches on is vegetarian cooking. A lot of communities cook their vegetarian food very simply but with the Kayasths there was a lot of finesse. Everything was cooked in a very time consuming way; bhuna is very important. The third strand you find in the book is on meat. "I find it very interesting because you have 'liver' made of moong ki dal because a lot women were vegetarian even though they were cooking meat". The book also focuses on the drinking culture of the community, which again you don’t normally find. "We have this notion that in India we never had a drinking culture, but the Kayasth, because of their relation to the British administration, did". 

Anoothi Vishal -
Picture Credit - Kunal Chandra

Kayasth Khatirdari, which is the route Anoothi took for the launch of her book, at Olive Beach in  Bangalore, is legendary and Anoothi describes it such, "We were part of the Mughal quad and then later the British administration and have always been bureaucrats, etc. 

We were a community that entertained a lot, so the table was always laid out. The food was a very important aspect and as was hospitality. The table was always laden with many delicacies and that’s Khatirdari (hospitality). Even ordinarily, for an everyday meal we would have at least a meat curry for dinner and two or three vegetarian dishes along with some condiments, freshly made pickle etc. Obviously for entertaining, inventive kind of dishes were laid and those are now part of the Kayasth Khatirdar". 


Anoothi's book is peppered with recipes of the Kayasth community and for a change these are listed in the chapter index at the beginning of the book rather than a glossary at the end. They are of course just a smattering from what the community collectively has. At Olive Beach she served up a buffet dinner with quite a few dishes that are not part of the book. Though the stars did not align enough for me to make it, Swapna Venkatesh of The Foodporn Diaries and Monika Manchanda of Sinamon Tales did. Swapna loved the slow cooked Mutton dish Kaliya which she was told was made in just a cup of oil for a quantity sufficient for a party. Great tasting mutton with the minimal use of fat is hard to achieve she adds. Monika loved the Kulle - an old Delhi Mathur style chaat with cucumber as the main ingredient. Monika felt this was a great take on chaat and very fresh on the palate.

Very few food writers are able excite hunger with their writing and Anoothi achieves that in quite a few places. I love how in one place in the book she describes the use of choti elaichi, javitri, and kebabchini to disguise the aroma of meatiness of dishes. And of course the making of the Yakhni Pulao under the watchful eye of Mrs LC aka Barima - from the choice of meat cuts - a little bit of thigh, few pieces of raan, gol boti - to the visual of a bubbling aromatic stock to the bhunaoing of the meat and finally it going together with the rice for that last stage of cooking. I could also picture sitting at the table, rubbing my hands in glee, watching that steaming hot vessel of Yakhni Pulao come in.

In fact I made the Yakhni Pulao myself - I used Sona Masuri rice instead of the said basmati, but it still did turn out very flavourful and made for a satisfying meal. I also made the Bharwan Bhindi, which had my fussy daughter licking the plate clean and my husband putting his rice straight into the bowl of bhindi and eating it all up. And so a head's up - this is one of those recipe books, where the recipes do work brilliantly. The same can't be said for many books in the market today.
 
Mrs LC aka Barima - on whose kitchen and wonderfully laden table this book is based

Anoothi says of her fondest memories of Barima, "I can’t get over the fact that my grandmother used to tell me recipes as bedtime stories and when I think back on it, perhaps it was natural. I don’t know why was she telling me recipes. I’ve never cooked Gajar ka Halwa in my life but as a two year old that is what she told me and that is what I remember. Even though she was not really into food, she was very culturally inclined.

When we were kids, there were 5 of us, siblings and cousins. Everyday in the morning she would take us to one sweet shop and we would individually choose a Mithai. We would take one piece of these five separate sweets and come back and it was like a morning ritual. We would go for morning walk, stop at that sweet shop, take one sweet and come back, I think that fabulous exposure to anything".

The book is a lovely read, made even better with the recipes that are provided. The book goes to show how food can be such a versatile subject - from being the focus of casual banter to serious discussions, to a reflection of the past and present and perhaps even a merger of the two. It shows how globalization may have taken over the world, but somewhere in all of us is a leaning towards a solid food heritage.

Title: Mrs LC's Table
Author: Anoothi Vishal
Publisher: Hachette India
Editor: Pouloumi Chaterjee
Price: Rs 350
Kindle Price: Rs 208.60

Kindle edition: Rs 313.50

Its not often that a book leaves such an impression on you that it pushes you to write about it almost as soon as you put it down. Saransh Goila's 'India on My Platter' (Rs 295, Om Books International) is one such book. Let me be honest... I did not know of Saransh, or the show he hosted on the Food Food Channel, before I saw the hype about this book online. Nevertheless, the idea of a 100-day road trip covering 20,000 kms across the length and breadth of India, taking in culinary delights was a good enough reason to pick the book up.

I had multiple thoughts churning through my mind at the end of this book, so I put down my thoughts in parts...

First Impressions
The language - because that's where this book hurts the most - is pedestrian at best. It reads more like the journal of a high school student who is writing down things as it happens. That in itself is not wrong as far as formats go - I put the onus squarely on the shoulders of the editor to bring out the beauty of Saransh's experiences (and he has had some beautiful ones). In this case, Saransh, I think you should ask your editor for a refund. The book is replete with cringe-worthy spelling errors, redundancies and long, convoluted sentences. Tenses go all over the place and back making the reading quite laborious. Somewhere from the 50th page onwards, I picked up a pencil and began editing the book as I went along, just for kicks. Almost every paragraph from then on, has something to pick on.

Dear Editor of India on My Platter
- Chilli is what you put in a dish, Chilly is when you feel cold
- "Butterflying" an orange is done by cutting the back of an orange and not its backside
-  MSG is MSG and Ajinomoto is a brand - that doesn't make it the same thing
- Its Greco/Graeco-Roman architecture and not Greeko-Roman

And this is only from page 75 or so onwards!

What kind of sentences are
1. "I found this concept of costing the sheermal depended on the amount of spices and dry fruits used in it."
2. ".... saffron bought in all the way from Iran."
3. "I decided to drive through Bihar, briefly." - and then what?
4. "Turn around the parantha and cook on the other side."
5. "Assam's 70% of the population is tribal..."
6. "I want to thrown in my two cents to travellers."
7. "I belong to the same caste as the Goel's, and I took an instant liking to them'"- I am sure the intention was not to be racist, but it definitely comes across that way.
8. "... religious leanings of Mathura." - Mathura is a place, it cannot have religious leanings. Its people on the other hand can.
9. "roti-sized dough balls" - Dough balls the size of a roti? I don't think that's what you were aiming at.

I could go on and on, but suffice to say this is by far one of the worst edited pieces of reading I have come across so far.

As for the contents of the book - There are a few accounts that stand out brilliantly for me. Cooking with truckers is a great one. One was the process of making 300 kgs of biryani at Cafe Bahar by Ali Asgar. Now this account is a really, lovely piece of writing, with it being able to evoke a mental picture of the whole thing. What really hurt at the end of it though was the recipe of a Gobi biryani being provided - While I love a good vegetarian pulao, I do not get what a gobi biryani is?  And if I had the privilege of meeting someone with 25 years of experience in biryani making, I would at least wiggle out some tips I could use when making a biryani at home, if not a recipe. The other was the story of the origin of the Tunday kebab and Murad Ali's hand, or the lack of it, behind it all. Now that too was an interesting piece.

Every other experience is an enviable one too  - I mean I would gladly give my left arm and leg to do this journey. And while I understand that there is only so much that you can showcase in each place, and that everyone will want details on their region's cuisine, there were a lot of questions I felt that could have been addressed in the book. For example:

- Puducherry, when you say an attempt is made to add a French touch to the food and that sauces are treated like gravies - would be great if told us how?
- Bengaluru - You mention at the end of your Ayurvedic food experience that it changed your perspective on food? How?
- In Vishakapatnam, you don't name the pickle company (advertising issues maybe) and mention only three pickles apart from Gongura... I personally would have love to know more.
- In Bhopal you taste interesting flavors of tofu - pray why not tell us which ones? I for one didn't know Indian-made tofu is available in flavors.

I have a lot of such questions and being someone who loves reading about food, I was left very unsatisfied. And may I add at this point, your love for the past tense pretty much made the book sound like all the people you met are long gone, and all the places you visited no longer exist.

India on My Platter as a book has immense potential if it had been edited the right way. I am surprised at the number of big names of the industry that have given their name to this book. I would have thought that at least their assistants would have read through the book. Saransh, if you do plan another edition for this, please get a real editor. Your experiences have immense potential as a book. This one sadly does not do you any justice.

I also had the pleasure of seeing the Tadka Girls in action, when they were on a promotional round of their book at Atta Gallata recently. What better way to show off your creation than by holding a demo and interaction.

Well this is my two bit on the yummy magazine.. what do you think of it??

Ok, I have promised myself several times this year that I will be more regular with the blog - make no mistake, I do miss it a lot. Its just that life seems to have railroaded me into a rut and with this post I firmly intend to get out of it. When I first started this blog, I mentioned that as a child, I was a fussy eater... well fussy to the extent of redefining the term. And so poor mom had to innovate in millions of ways to get me to eat my food. There was honestly nothing that interested me (she loves to retell the story to all who would listen, now that I have my own fussy eater - something to the effect of life coming full circle)

Under the really trained eye of publisher and Managing Editor Kripal Ammana, the magazine will have your taste buds in a water frenzy right from the cover page. The overwhelming importance given to food photography is seen in the fact that the every story makes you truly wish you were at that table with the writer.

The magazine covers restaurants, some new, some old and some after a revamp. The coverage is done in a unique way where the writer visits the place repeatedly for lunch or dinner in order to get a genuine feel of the place and sample a wider range of the menu. The restaurant reviews give you a fair idea of the decor, the ease of parking facilities, the various offerings on the menu, the pricing and even suggestions on what you can put together. Simple elements such as the boxes which tell you what kind of a foodie you need to be to visit the place in question.

Another column I truly enjoy in this magazine is the "Inside Story", where prominent couples and foodies are invited to create a authentic spread and educate the audience on the intricacies of local cuisine. Besides the great photospread and article that goes with it, the recipes of all dishes presented are an added bonus. Of course there are guest columns by famous chefs, columns that detail the great food places of particular areas in Bangalore, interviews and recipes by famous chefs and a regular column on Wine by Alok Chandra.

The magazine is the only one of its kind that is brought out in India. I do wish it had a review or two of restaurants that serve in Rs 1000 to Rs 1500 with alcohol range. If the editor of the magazine ever reads this I would like to offer my services for the column :).

Suffice to say, if you love food, you have got to have Food Lovers with you. You can catch them on Facebook as well.