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Annapurna, the Indian Goddess of Nourishment, presides over a rich harvest of stories reimagined for the twenty-first-century palate. Here, food manifests as ploy, bargain, symbolic communication, a bone of contention, a lesson, as it weaves through the lives of a cast of characters — kings and commoners, witches and goddesses, gurus and bandits, refugees and travellers.
Each story is followed by a vegetarian recipe offered up by a character. Gathered from the four corners of India, there are well-known dishes like nourishing dal and irresistible mango lassi, novelties like avial and Bengali khichari, as well as a new twist on beloved foods, such as samosas with a peas and coconut filling.
Infused with humane values, expertly blending the timeless and the contemporary, the magical and the everyday, encompassing East, West, and the in-between, this fusion of fiction and food will delight and inspire.
Annapurna’s Bounty is ingeniously designed as a banquet for the body and the mind: each of its ten chapters offers a tale and a recipe from various eras and regions of India. Men and women, divinities, demons and animals are the heroes of these vivid and colourful stories, over which floats the heady scent of mangoes and spices.
Veena Gokhale is a talented fiction writer and a food lover. Annapurna’s Bounty is an irresistible blend of these two great passions, combining delightful Indian legends, freshly told, with her personally honed recipes. This is a book you will want to buy twice: one to give a good friend and another to keep.
Gokhale fleshes out the archetypes in these stories in a way that feels fresh and compelling, and time and place are beautifully, vividly rendered. I could almost swear that some of these stories have an actual aroma. When I came across the recipe for dal, I was inspired to head to the kitchen and make it.
There is a golden vein of poetry that flavours food lore, and Veena Gokhale has mined it well. Gokhale has served up a new oral tradition: a book fit to be consumed voraciously by mind and by mouth. These ancient tales of feast and famine and fire and flood have been skillfully reworked into a tapestry that weaves myth with menu. It deserves a permanent place at our dinner table.
From goddesses to gurus and samosas to curries, this volume is a collection of retellings complemented by vegetarian recipes using the rich legends and ingredients of India. Veena Gokhale feeds us mind, body and soul with this wise and delicious book.
1. LAND OF MILK AND SUGAR
- Ash Reshteh
2. PARVATI BAI AND THE BANDITS
- Parvati Bai’s Rassa & Goda Masala
3. THE EMPEROR WHO LOVED MANGOES
- Mango Lassi Akbari
4. THREE GRAINS OF MUSTARD
- Carrot-Radish Salad
5. ANNAPURNA’S SOUP KITCHEN
- Goddess Parvati’s Bengali Kitchen
INTERLUDE
- “The World’s Oldest Curry”
6. DO THE RIGHT THING
- Mandakini’s Dal
7. THE FISHERMAN AND THE SORCERESS
- Avial
8. CHEF WILLIAM AND CAPTAIN TYRANT
- Chef William’s Mulligatawny Soup
9. THE CRIES OF ANIMALS
- King Vajradev’s Paal Payasam
10. THE TRAVELS OF SANBUSAK
- Veena’s Karanjis
AFTERWORD
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR