Telugu Recipes Travel to Calcutta

In 2020 March as the Lockdown was declared and several of us were trying to deal with the situation. Some of my friends began to ask me for recipes, recipes from my Telugu kitchen. Many of them wanted to try out something new, to help them tide over the restricted life that became the norm.  That is when I began to share recipes with them. I also began to write a Facebook post where I wrote the recipe. I also did something else, I began to share stories of my growing up in the city that is home, Calcutta (now Kolkata).I shared the recipe and the story with a photograph of the dish. Several of my FB friends responded to my posts. I called it Amma’s Kitchen and added a few more hastags – Telugu Kitchen in Calcutta, Telugu Vantalu, Telugu Recipes.

A friend wrote to me, on reading my first such post saying that he saw the beginnings of a book in my post. That made me give it as serious thought and I began to write down the recipes and document stories of my growing up in the city. I continued sharing them on FB and was happy to see several responses to the posts, some tried cooking and even sent me photographs of the dishes. The recipes were those that were cooked at home regularly, by Amma, by Appagaru, by my sister Usha and me as well.

A total of 120 recipes find place in the book and each recipe is preceded by a small story, of the life of the Pulugurtha family in Calcutta, stories in which memory and nostalgia coalesce.

The book is titled The Inheritance of Taste: Recipes of a Telugu Kitchen in Calcutta (Readomania) and is now available for preorder.

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