num_pages: 288
description: Though it's primarily Punjabi food that's become known as Indian food in the United States India is as much an immigrant nation as America and it has the vast range of cuisines to prove it. In Eating India  award-winning food writer and Bengali food expert Chitrita Banerji takes readers on a marvelous odyssey through a national cuisine formed by generations of arrivals assimilations and conquests. With each wave of newcomers-ancient Aryan tribes Persians Middle Eastern Jews Mongols Arabs Europeans-have come new innovations in cooking and new ways to apply India's rich native spices poppy seeds saffron and mustard to the vegetables milks grains legumes and fishes that are staples of the Indian kitchen. In this book Calcutta native and longtime U.S. resident Banerji describes in lush and mouthwatering prose her travels through a land blessed with marvelous culinary variety and particularity.Skillfully moving backward and forward in time Banerji a culinary historian based in the U.S. whose previous books have explored the cookery of her native Bengal (Life and Food in Bengal) regards India with the intimacy of a native the curiosity of an outsider and the broad vantage of an expatriate. In the course of her culinary tours across the subcontinent she poses compelling questions about the nature of authenticity in a time of great flux the mutability of tradition and the place of food in secular life and religious culture. For answers she looks not only to the past but to the present as it unfolds in roadside shacks sweet shops or a temple canteen describing how outside influences such as colonialism and immigration have shaped India's regional cuisines. Early in this engaging work Banerji recounts how whenever she invites Americans to her home for an elaborate meal rather than sampling each dish in sequence-the better to appreciate its subtle flavors-her guests heap together meat rice and
language: English
title: Eating India: An Odyssey into the Food and Culture of the Land of Spices
publisher: Bloomsbury USA