The Brahmin Butcher

Food is a basic requirement. In real terms it’s as basic as the air we breathe, the water we drink or the morning ablutions. Just there... never given a second thought till it goes missing. That’s the status it would have been relegated to, but for the ‘people’ who ate, developed and made it the centre of their Universe.

 

Food has always fascinated me...the colors, textures, smells, tastes and more importantly the history.

 

My mother, an Indian Brahmin from Bangalore in the south of India, – a vegan by birth, while studying in the northern part of the country, Delhi, fell in love with a boy from Calcutta in the eastern part of India...Whew! In the 50’s that was something else...possibly the only saving grace for my paternal grandmother was that the girl too was a Brahmin. My mother was in for a surprise - a sub sect of eastern Brahmins of India ate MEAT! My mother, for the first time in her life, was given a choice – Vegetarian or Love Marriage.... She chose the latter. Years on she learned to cook fish and meat dishes from Eastern India

 

What intrigued me was how people made food choices depending on their religion, faith or beliefs. How could one group enjoy frog legs while another was repulsed? How could a ‘Beef eating’ community start treating cows as sacred? 

 

If food was the reason man became a nomad and then later settled on the banks of fertile rivers for feeding his community and livestock... how come the history of the world is all about who killed whom and not about development of food and recipes?

 

What started as a wish to learn the culinary arts has since evolved into a journey and a quest, an obsession to find the lost recipes of the ancient Worlds from 2000CE. Time has gone by reading through historical tomes, rediscovering culinary classics, exploring countless techniques of cooking, and reconstructing dishes that time forgot with ingredients that are available today. Cooking techniques of the ancient civilizations were simple. Stress was more on tastes and flavors. In this book I have collated those recipes that are simple to create. It is an attempt to introduce you to dishes lost in kitchens through time, recipes with a story, stories of romance and war that influenced food, anecdotes and trivia that lent their unique color, flavor and techniques to various cuisines.

 

Researching, compiling, reconstructing, cooking and eating for this book has been an experience for me. I hope this endeavor at sharing my experience with you will truly help you enjoy food through the centuries! Be blessed – stay fed.

 

Work in progress. Manuscript still not available for review.

 

Agent: Anuj

Edit: Sharvani