Grains Greens And Grated Coconuts

A collection of Indian family recipes, paired with memories of Indian culinary and cultural history.

"Other books have ably explored India's far southern territory, but Ms. Ramachandran reveals amazing range and depth in Kerala's Hindu vegetarian traditions."-The New York Times review "Ammini Ramachandran, a Texas based food writer with roots in the Indian state of Kerala, has self published an authoritative cookbook cum memoir, Grains, Greens, and Grated Coconuts, on that region's elaborate, nuanced cuisine."-Saveur February, 2008 "Recipes that make me want to rush to the kitchen, intriguing techniques that could be used with other cuisines, fascinating personal stories about growing up in a big Kerala household, all embedded in a deep understanding of Kerala as a pivot of Asian history. It's a wonderful tribute to Kerala and a stunning gift for the rest of us."-Rachel Laudan, author of The Food of Paradise: Exploring Hawaii's Culinary Heritage "Grains, Greens, and Grated Coconuts is a jewel of a cookbook-from its authentic recipes (many published here for the first time) to Ammini Ramachandran's evocative personal anecdotes of Kerala's culinary traditions. It is at once scholarly, yet accessible, and especially charming for its delicious recipes and intriguing stories from the royal kitchens of Kochi."-Grace Young, author of The Wisdom of the Chinese Kitchen

From dal to samosas, paneer to vindaloo, dosa to naan, Indian food is diverse and wide-ranging—unsurprising when you consider India’s incredible range of climates, languages, religions, tribes, and customs. Its cuisine differs from north to south, yet what is it that makes Indian food recognizably Indian, and how did it get that way? To answer those questions, Colleen Taylor Sen examines the diet of the Indian subcontinent for thousands of years, describing the country’s cuisine in the context of its religious, moral, social, and philosophical development. Exploring the ancient indigenous plants such as lentils, eggplants, and peppers that are central to the Indian diet, Sen depicts the country’s agricultural bounty and the fascination it has long held for foreign visitors. She illuminates how India’s place at the center of a vast network of land and sea trade routes led it to become a conduit for plants, dishes, and cooking techniques to and from the rest of the world. She shows the influence of the British and Portuguese during the colonial period, and she addresses India’s dietary prescriptions and proscriptions, the origins of vegetarianism, its culinary borrowings and innovations, and the links between diet, health, and medicine. She also offers a taste of Indian cooking itself—especially its use of spices, from chili pepper, cardamom, and cumin to turmeric, ginger, and coriander—and outlines how the country’s cuisine varies throughout its many regions. Lavishly illustrated with one hundred images, Feasts and Fasts is a mouthwatering tour of Indian food full of fascinating anecdotes and delicious recipes that will have readers devouring its pages.

A KCRW Top 10 Food Book of 2021 A Minnesota Star Tribune Top 15 Cookbook of 2021 A WBUR Here & Now Favorite Cookbook of 2021 The James Beard Award–winning and New York Times best-selling compendium of the paper’s best recipes, revised and updated. Ten years after the phenomenal success of her once-in-a-generation cookbook, former New York Times food editor Amanda Hesser returns with an updated edition for a new wave of home cooks. She has added 120 new but instantly iconic dishes to her mother lode of more than a thousand recipes, including Samin Nosrat’s Sabzi Polo (Herbed Rice with Tahdig), Todd Richards’s Fried Catfish with Hot Sauce, and J. Kenji López-Alt’s Cheesy Hasselback Potato Gratin. Devoted Times subscribers as well as newcomers to the paper’s culinary trove will also find scores of timeless gems such as Purple Plum Torte, David Eyre’s Pancake, Pamela Sherrid’s Summer Pasta, and classics ranging from 1940s Caesar Salad to modern No-Knead Bread. Hesser has tested and adapted each of the recipes, and she highlights her go-to favorites with wit and warmth. As Saveur declared, this is a “tremendously appealing collection of recipes that tells the story of American cooking.”

A New York Times bestseller and Winner of the James Beard Award All the best recipes from 150 years of distinguished food journalism—a volume to take its place in America's kitchens alongside Mastering the Art of French Cooking and How to Cook Everything. Amanda Hesser, co-founder and CEO of Food52 and former New York Times food columnist, brings her signature voice and expertise to this compendium of influential and delicious recipes from chefs, home cooks, and food writers. Devoted Times subscribers will find the many treasured recipes they have cooked for years—Plum Torte, David Eyre's Pancake, Pamela Sherrid's Summer Pasta—as well as favorites from the early Craig Claiborne New York Times Cookbook and a host of other classics—from 1940s Caesar salad and 1960s flourless chocolate cake to today's fava bean salad and no-knead bread. Hesser has cooked and updated every one of the 1,000-plus recipes here. Her chapter introductions showcase the history of American cooking, and her witty and fascinating headnotes share what makes each recipe special. The Essential New York Times Cookbook is for people who grew up in the kitchen with Claiborne, for curious cooks who want to serve a nineteenth-century raspberry granita to their friends, and for the new cook who needs a book that explains everything from how to roll out dough to how to slow-roast fish—a volume that will serve as a lifelong companion.

This reference work covers the cuisine and foodways of India in all their diversity and complexity, including regions, personalities, street foods, communities and topics that have been often neglected. The book starts with an overview essay situating the Great Indian Table in relation to its geography, history and agriculture, followed by alphabetically organized entries. The entries, which are between 150 and 1,500 words long, combine facts with history, anecdotes, and legends. They are supplemented by longer entries on key topics such as regional cuisines, spice mixtures, food and medicine, rites of passages, cooking methods, rice, sweets, tea, drinks (alcoholic and soft) and the Indian diaspora. This comprehensive volume illuminates contemporary Indian cooking and cuisine in tradition and practice.

Intended for students, general readers, vegetarians, and vegans, as well as those interested in animal welfare and liberation, this A–Z encyclopedia explores the historical and cultural significance of vegetarianism in the United States and beyond. Vegetarianism in the United States did not start in the 1960s—it has a much longer, complex history going back to the early 1800s. Cultural Encyclopedia of Vegetarianism examines that history through the lens of culture, focusing on what vegetarianism has had to say to and about Americans. This A–Z encyclopedia brings together the work of a number of scholars from diverse fields, including history, sociology, philosophy, religious studies, anthropology, nutrition, American studies, religious studies, women's and gender history, and the history of medicine. Approximately 100 essay entries cover cultural and historical aspects of vegetarianism, primarily but not exclusively in relation to the United States, shedding light on the practice's roots in ancient cultures and challenging popular myths and misconceptions related to both vegetarianism and veganism. With discussions on everything from activist movements to cookbooks, the encyclopedia offers a unique, wide-ranging exploration that will appeal to students, practitioners, and anyone else who wants to know more.

Are the Thomas references in the Gospel of John, the Thomas compositions, and the early Thomas traditions in northwestern and southern India purely legendary as biblical scholars have assumed or do they preserve unexamined historical traditions intermittently as the Thomas Christians in India have believed? Didymus Judas Thomas is one of the most misunderstood characters from the beginning of the New Testament history and interpretation. In this study, Thomaskutty addresses the following questions: whether Thomas was merely a 'doubting Thomas' or a 'genuine Thomas'? Can we understand Thomas comprehensively by bringing the New Testament, apocrypha, and historical traditions together? How was Thomas connected to eastern Christianity and how does the Thomas literature support/not support this connectivity? Can we understand the Thomas traditions related to Judea, Syria, and India with the help of canonical, extra canonical, and traditio-historical documents? Thomaskutty investigates the development of the Thomas literature right from the beginning, examining and questioning the approaches and methodologies that have been employed in interpreting these documents, and analyzes the Thomas literature closely in order to understand the character, his mission involvements, and the possible implications this may have for understanding early Christianity in the east.