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In Eating India, the award-winning writer Chitrita Banerji takes us on a thrilling journey through a national food formed by generations of arrivals, assimilations and conquests. In mouth-watering prose, she explores how each wave of newcomers brought innovative new ways to combine the subcontinent's rich native spices, poppy seeds, saffron and mustard with the vegetables, fish, grains and pulses that are the staples of the Indian kitchen. Along the way, she visits traditional weddings, tiffin rooms, city markets, roadside cafes and tribal villages, to find out how India's turbulent history has shaped its people and its cuisine. Beautifully illustrated throughout, Eating India will stand as an authority on Indian food for years to come.
Chitrita Banerji grew up in Calcutta and received her master's degree in English from Harvard University. She is an internationally recognized writer on Bengali food, and is the author of Life and Food in Bengal, Bengali Cooking, and Feeding the Gods. A two-time winner of Sophie Coe awards in Food and History, she has written about food for Gourmet, Granta and the American Prospect among others. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
"A rich and evocative book, the perfect introduction to Indian gastronomy"
– Independent
"An exhaustive, salivating, hunger-inducing history of the varying regional cuisines of India [...] Eating India pulses with life – enveloping the reader in the scent, taste, heat and flavour of an ancient cuisine"
– Sunday Telegraph
"Thoughtful, well-expressed, informative [...] the description of spices and flavours leaves you yearning for the foods themselves"
– Guardian
"An education and a pleasure"
– Scotsman
