Books on Food - The Locavore

Books on Food

The Migrant Women Running Delhi’s Informal Economy

May 8, 2025
Neha Dixit

Published in 2024, The Many Lives of Syeda X: The Story of an Unknown Indian is Neha Dixit’s first book. Photo courtesy of Juggernaut Books.

By following Syeda’s journey—from trimming the loose threads of jeans to cooking namkeen, and from shelling almonds to making tea strainers—Neha Dixit tries to capture the lived realities of the…

View Post

Books on Food

Dried Fish At Amma’s Memorial

April 10, 2025
Niranjana R., Bhagath Singh A., Palanikumar M, Anthoni Guruz, Nithya K.

In a three-year-long cookbook project spanning the Coromandel coast, Bhagat Singh A. writes a tribute to his late mother.

View Post

Books on Food

Ingredients, Cooking Techniques, Utensils: How Trade Routes Influenced Kerala’s Food As We Know It

January 13, 2025
Tanya Abraham

Among the many ingredients introduced by the Portuguese upon their arrival in India in the 15th century, vinegar was a prime influencer of Kerala cooking, writes Tanya Abraham in Eating With History, a book tracing the influence of ancient trade and colonisation on the cuisines of Kerala.

View Post

Books on Food

They Eat Meat!

December 5, 2024
Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar

“Vadodara is a strongly Hindu city, People here believe in purity. I am not too sure what this purity is, but all I know is that people here don’t eat nonveg. Nor do they approve of people who eat non-veg.”

View Post

Books on Food

Memories on a Plate: Documenting Stories From 100 Indian Kitchens

November 13, 2024
Nivaala And The Alipore Post

Memories on a Plate, a crowd-sourced initiative by Nivaala and The Alipore Post, seeks to build a bigger kitchen,one with room for memory, identity, grief, and a wide spectrum of emotions that deepen our relationships with food.

View Post

Civilising the Tastebuds

July 5, 2024
Techi Nimi

When Techi Nimi remembers her years at boarding schools, it is laced with memories of hunger. She longed for Arunachalee food, which was never served.

View Post

Books on Food

On hunting the hilsa and mastering its bones

April 17, 2024
Samanth Subramanian

Shorshe ilish, perhaps the most popular technique of cooking hilsa, involves simmering and serving cuts of the fish in a mustard sauce so pungent that its wallop reaches right into your sinuses, writes Samanth Subramanian in this excerpt from Following Fish.

View Post

Grinding Songs are a Reflection of Goa’s Intangible Cultural Heritage

April 4, 2024
Heta Pandit

While women from certain communities in Goa are barred from the home and kitchen during menstruation, they are allowed to grind grains on the grinding stone. In this section of 'Grinding Stories Retold: Songs from Goa’, Heta Pandit discovers how traditional gendered norms don’t quite apply to the grinding stone, and the responsibilities and rituals around it.

View Post

Books on Food

Vishalakshi Padmanabhan is Devoted to Preserving Heirloom Rice Varieties

December 8, 2023
Archana Pidathala

In this chapter of 'Why Cook’, Archana Pidathala tells us about Vishalakshi Padmanabhan, founder of Buffalo Back Collective in Bangalore. Vishala’s guiding principle for the organic store is rooted in the food ethic she grew up with: to waste nothing, and cherish everything.

View Post

Mrs K.M. Mathew gained popularity after her column on Mutton Bafath

October 26, 2023
Thangam Mammen

Generations of Malayalis have grown up with Mrs K.M.Mathew’s treasured cookbooks. Read the foreword of her latest book, Mrs K.M. Mathew’s Finest, by her daughter Thangam Mammen. In a short interview with her, we discover more about her mother’s measured approach to cooking and living.

View Post