Climbing The Mango Trees

The enchanting autobiography of the seven-time James Beard Award-winning cookbook author and acclaimed actress who taught America how to cook Indian food. “Wistful, funny and tremendously satisfying.... Jaffrey's taste memories sparkle with enthusiasm, and her talent for conveying them makes the book relentlessly appetizing." —The New York Times Book Review Whether climbing the mango trees in her grandparents' orchard in Delhi or picnicking in the Himalayan foothills on meatballs stuffed with raisins and mint, tucked into freshly baked spiced pooris, Madhur Jaffrey’s life has been marked by food, and today these childhood pleasures evoke for her the tastes and textures of growing up. Following Jaffrey from India to Britain, this memoir is both an enormously appealing account of an unusual childhood and a testament to the power of food to prompt memory, vividly bringing to life a lost time and place. Also included here are recipes for more than thirty delicious dishes from Jaffrey’s childhood.

If you were climbing a tree, just what might you see? Birds or animals or insects? Would you swing like a monkey? Or pick the ripest fruit straight from the branch? Join award-winning author and illustrator, Durga Yael Bernhard, on a trip around the world to climb its weirdest and most wonderful trees. No matter if you are in Africa, Asia, Europe, or America, there is a grand adventure waiting for you—provided you have a tree to climb in your neighborhood! Just Like Me, Climbing a Tree explores 12 of the most distinctive trees from across the globe, and includes educational notes about each of the trees to help answer questions that curious young minds might have.

In this James Beard Award-winning cookbook, Madhur Jaffrey draws on more than four decades of culinary adventures, travels, and experimentation to create a diverse collection of more than 650 vegetarian recipes featuring dishes from five continents. Madhur Jaffrey's World Vegetarian exemplifies Madhur's unsurpassed ability to create simple, flavorful homecooking that is well within the reach of every cook. Extensive sections on beans, vegetables, grains, and dairy explore the myriad ways these staples are enjoyed worldwide. Madhur balances appealing, uncomplicated dishes such as sumptuous omelets and rich polentas with less familiar ingredients such as green mangoes, pigeon peas, and spelt. She demystifies the latter with clear-cut explanations so that incorporating new combinations and interesting flavors into everyday cooking becomes second nature. She also offers substantial sections on soups, salads, and drinks, as well as sauces and other flavorings, to help round out a meatless meal and add exciting new flavors to even the most easily prepared dishes. Each section opens with a detailed introduction, where Madhur describes methods for preparation and storage, as well as different cooking techniques and their cultural origins. And a complete glossary of ingredients and techniques clarifies some of the little-known elements of the world's cuisines so that even the uninitiated can bring the flavors of Asia, the Middle East, the Caribbean, and more to their tables. Throughout this extensive collection, Madhur includes personal anecdotes and historical contexts that bring her recipes to life, whether she's remembering field of leeks she saw in the mountains of northern Greece or describing how corn-based dishes arrived in Indonesia through colonial trade. Committed vegetarians will rejoice at the wide variety of meatless fare Madhur offers, and nonvegetarians will enjoy experimenting with her global flavorings. This highly readable resource promises to be a valuable addition to any cook's library, helping everyone make healthful ethnic foods a part of everyday cooking.

Editor Michael Montlack has assembled an anthology of a hundred gay poets--award winners and fresh voices--in thrall with female icons throughout the ages ranging from Gloria Swanson to Mary J, Blige, from Edith Piaf to Joni Mitchell, Bette Midler to Lady Gaga. These are not merely appreciations of the gorgeous and daring but poems that are confessional to bittersweet to witty.

A queer writer travelling through India can't escape the regrets of his past, nor the impending ruin of his present. "I am leaving for the winter – I have to get away from this small town and all its dangers – to write, read, think, all the most important things in the world but which are thought the least important, the most expendable." Thus begins the Indian winter of our narrator, a queer writer and translator much like the author, a winter that includes a meandering journey through India, trying to write about a long-ago lover whose death he has just learned of. While on this journey into memory, he flees his current faltering relationship in search of new friendships and intimacies. Inspired by Antonio Tabucchi's Indian Nocturne, and by the writings of Anaïs Nin, Rachel Cusk, and Carole Maso, among others, Indian Winter finds itself where the travel diary, the künstlerroman, poetry, and autofiction meet. But the heartbreak brought on by his unravelling relationship and his family's inability to accept his queerness cannot be outrun; as he traverses India, our narrator can't help but repeatedly encounter himself and the range of love and alienation he has within.

Madhur Jaffrey, television's most-loved Indian cook, returned to our screens for a major new series for the Good Food Channel in October 2012. Travelling across Britain, visiting local Indian and South Asian communities, Madhur revealed how it's possible to sample virtually the whole of Indian cuisine without ever leaving the British Isles. In the official tie-in book to the series, Madhur Jaffrey showcases her favourite curry recipes with influences from all over the subcontinent: Punjabi, Goan, Parsi and Bengali amongst others. Carefully selected and adapted by Madhur, the recipes conjure up the colour and vitality of this vibrant culture, but keep to her mantra that Indian food doesn't need to be complicated. Always innovative and contemporary, Madhur will even give some of these traditional Indian recipes a twist - pairing Aloo Gobi with a very British roast lamb, for example. Whether it's the spicy, lentil-based specialities of Rajesthan, kebabs and kormas from Delhi, or coconut-infused curries from Kerala, we accompany Madhur Jaffrey on her very personal tour of our modern-day Curry Nation.

Native and imported, sacred and ordinary, culinary and floral, favourites of various kings and commoners over the centuries, trees are the most visible signs of nature in cities, fundamentally shaping their identities. Trees are storehouses of the complex origins and histories of city growth, coming as they do from different parts of the world, brought in by various local and colonial rulers. From the tree planted by Sarojini Naidu at Dehradun's clock tower to those planted by Sher Shah Suri and Jahangir on Grand Trunk Road, trees in India have served, above all, as memory keepers. They are our roots: their trunks our pillars, their bark our texture, and their branches our shade. Trees are nature's own museums. Drawing on extensive research, Cities and Canopies is a book about both the specific and the general aspects of these gentle life-giving creatures.