Flavours Of Home (Second Edition)

My tryst with cooking started when I was eight, I think, or, at least when I was old enough to read the Children's Britannica, a beautiful, red, hard bound set of books, with gilt lettering. What struck me in one of the volumes was a simple recipe for scones. With my mother’s help, I tried my hand in the kitchen. Because of the copious amount of praise my father doled, I was encouraged to “up my kitchen skills”. Home from boarding school, that was one pastime I indulged in during our long holidays. I loved leafing through the recipe section of Woman and Home, Femina, and Eve’s Weekly, and gazing at the pictures of food that appeared so enticing. I’d clip the recipes and pictures of beautifully iced cakes and roast chickens with delectable rich brown glazes and began to maintain my recipe journal. I’m no chef, but over 40 years of cooking, I have happily made the kitchen “The Hearth of our Home”. I often experiment with food and try to muster up meals for the family, extended family, and friends. This is a very personal collection of the memoirs of my food journey, starting from my beautiful school nestled in the hills in Ooty, the dining rooms of the Medical College I attended in Kerala, life with my parents, grandparents, friends, and neighbors. My husband, children, and grandchildren are the greatest critiques of my cooking, and my mentors who goaded me to write this book. The recipes are taken from dog-eared, grease-stained hand-written books by the two mothers in my life. Others are narrated by friends and neighbors, and have been converted to our family favourites. There are anecdotes of our personal lives, which lead to a recipe. Many have been tweaked over the years, both in the way of ingredients and cooking styles, while trying to keep the essence of the recipe alive.