My Bombay Kitchen: Traditional and Modern Parsi Home Cooking [Hardcover]

Niloufer Ichaporia King (Author), Alice Waters (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 18, 2007

The Persians of antiquity were renowned for their lavish cuisine and their never-ceasing fascination with the exotic. These traits still find expression in the cooking of India's rapidly dwindling Parsi population--descendants of Zoroastrians who fled Persia after the Sassanian empire fell to the invading Arabs. The first book published in the United States on Parsi food written by a Parsi, this beautiful volume includes 165 recipes and makes one of India's most remarkable regional cuisines accessible to Westerners. In an intimate narrative rich with personal experience, the author leads readers into a world of new ideas, tastes, ingredients, and techniques, with a range of easy and seductive menus that will reassure neophytes and challenge explorers.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this charming volume, an independent food scholar explores her Parsi heritage and provides a wide range of recipes that should prove revelatory even for home cooks used to whipping up a biryani at a moment's notice. Though it shares similarities with other subcontinental cuisines-a reliance on ghee, a taste for curry, a deep affection for vegetables-Parsi food is unique in many ways, hinting at its Persian ancestry with ample use of eggs, while nodding toward Europe through savory custards and rich desserts. Many recipes are both unusual and deeply comforting: onions, young garlic, and leeks turn rich and buttery in an Allium Confit, and Braised Greens, spiked with cayenne, are vegetables gone to heaven. Cauliflower, eggs and grated cheese take a decadent turn in Mother's Wobbly Caulfilower Custard. King even makes organ meats appealing: Chicken Livers in Green Masala is a luscious take on the underused ingredient, bright with cumin, chiles and coriander. King also has novel uses for goat brains, kid's trotters and tongue, an intriguing challenge for intrepid home cooks. Perhaps most delightful is her brief introduction to Parsi history and culture, which tells both the author's story as an Indian expatriate in Berkeley, and the fascinating background of one of the world's most sophisticated cuisines.
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Review

"King could do for Indian cooking in America what Alice Waters and company did for the food of southern France."--San Francisco Magazine

"Essential reading for anyone to understand Parsi culture and cuisine. . . . She evokes the passion to cook."--The Art of Eating

Niloufer Ichaporia King's intimate tone, wit, and personal stories make us feel as if we're right next to her.--Chow

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 355 pages
• Publisher: University of California Press; 1 edition (June 18, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0520249607
• ISBN-13: 978-0520249608
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 7.6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #361,733 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

51 of 54 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best Parsi cookbook cookbook I own. One of the best cookbooks I own., July 4, 2007

By 

Cast Iron Chef "Cast Iron Chef" (Tracy, CA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: My Bombay Kitchen: Traditional and Modern Parsi Home Cooking (Hardcover)

I received my order of "My Bombay Kitchen: Traditional and Modern Parsi Home Cooking - Niloufer Ichaporia King."

I STRONGLY recommend this book. My wife is Parsi, and I enjoy cooking Parsi cuisine (along with many other cuisines, but Parsi cuisine is a favorite) and have a number of books on the subject, so I looked at how she treated some recipies I had already done, Patrel and Dhansak Masala. I've visited where my wife grew up in Bombay on M Karve Road near the Eros theater. There I also enjoyed Goan cuisine (my wife's 'nannys' were Goan and are superb cooks of both Goan and Parsi cuisine). Reading this book made you feel like you were back in Bombay learning a cuisine at the hands of someone who had mastered the cuisine and was gracious and competent enough to be teaching it to you with the clarity and style of a master teacher. Clearly this book is written by a Parsi in America, paying attention to the difficulties of obtaining certain ingredients, noting appropriate substitutions, yet showing the knowledge that could only come from someone who had been a part of the culture in Bombay - maintaining a most authentic result. The book isn't simply a collection of exquisitely presented recipies demonstrating exemplarary versions of those recipies, but the recipies are presented within the cultural context of the Parsi traditions, noting the culinary likes and dislikes of Parsis, what are mainstays of the tradition, etc etc. Delightfully written - a pleasure to read (excellent editing) and a clear presentation of information that I've struggled to get elsewhere.

Dhansak Masala is a complex spice mixture composed of dhana jiru and sambhar masala, each complex mixtures in their own right, with endless variations as numerous as there are cooks. I have searched high and low on the internet for these recipies only to find ones far more mediocre than the excellent verrsion she has presented in this book.

Her explanation of making Patrel would have saved me endless hours trying to find out that Colocasia leaves are actually taro root leaves. She lays out the techniques in a clear style reminiscent of Julia Child of exactly how to assemble this dish. I know that reading each recipe cover to cover will be a treasure trove of information.

I could go on and on, but suffice it to say that if you have an interest in Parsi or even Indian or Persian cuisine, this is a must have for your collection.

I really couldn't recommend a cookbook more highly. I'm not alone either - she is strongly recommended by Alice Waters, who wrote the forward of this book, famous for her restaurant in Berkeley, Chez Panisse and a major influence to cooks everywhere on the use and incorporation of local fresh ingredients being used in her food preparations. Also Paula Wolfert, who has written an excellent book on Moroccan Cuisine among her many accomplishments, and Dianne Kennedy, whose Mexican cookbook is a classial reference of Mexican cuisine. And other esteemed chefs and editors. I really couldn't be in better company in recommending a book.

Finally, my ultimate critic of my cooking, my wife, has been absolutely delighted by the recipies in this book, partiularly the Parsi scrambled egg recipe.

26 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Familiar as custard, exotic as Bombay -- a revelation, December 17, 2007

By 

Jesse Kornbluth "Head Butler" (New York) - See all my reviews
(TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: My Bombay Kitchen: Traditional and Modern Parsi Home Cooking (Hardcover)

Alice Waters calls Niloufer Ichaporia King "one of the great cooks I know." It makes Waters crazy that King has steadfastly refused to open a restaurant. But it delights Waters that, on the Parsi New Year, King consents to cook a feast worthy of her mother's Bombay kitchen at her legendary restaurant.

I've never been to that dinner. Nor have I ever enjoyed an Indian meal that King might claim as her own. I'm the standard American who claims to love Indian food --- I look over the menu and wonder one thing: how hot to order the curry. Oh, and maybe whether to get the king-size beer if I've thrown sanity to the winds and ordered a vindaloo.

But smart friends have said "My Bombay Kitchen" is the cookbook event of the year.

And Alice Waters --- she created Chez Panisse and almost singlehandedly launched the good food movement --- certainly knows her way around an entree.

And as even a skim of her book indicates, Niloufer Ichaporia King doesn't cook the mundane fare I'm used to.

One reason fits all: Niloufer Ichaporia King's people are not quite "Indian".

The Parsis were Persians who migrated to southern India from Persia. They had a highly evolved culture, heavily shaped by the teachings of Zoroaster, a prophet who lived in the seventh century before Christ. King calls Zoroastrianism "a religion of conduct rather than piety," for it holds that all people --- that includes both sexes --- are equal, that we are stewards of the earth, and that life is "an ongoing struggle between light and dark forces within each human being."

Because Bombay is a port city and a commercial hub, its tastes were sophisticated when King was growing up there. So was its food --- as King writes, Bombay had "a real magpie cuisine" that drew upon the old ways and, at the same time, featured local modifications of the food of other traditions.

King learned about food from her mother and the family cook, then went off to boarding school, where food was "a constant preoccupation" and luxury was "a can of baked beans after lights out." Though she moved to America, she had a keen memory of her childhood meals and the joys of "a diet not constrained by religion." With the help of her mother's recipes --- and her mother --- she began to use her training as an anthropologist to chronicle Parsi cooking.

Most of her recipes will be of interest primarily to hard-core foodies. Are you likely to make your own Indian breads? Have a hankering to whip up some brain cutlets? Can your butcher get kid for you? And how about banana leaves to wrap fish filets?

So what's left to the amateur chef --- or, more urgently, the home cook who'd like a modest expansion of his/her repertoire?

Just enough recipes to justify the purchase --- and whet the palate for the more adventurous recipes.

So I'm starting with Parsi crudités, a selection of off-the-beaten track vegetables (jicama) and fruits (green mango crescents), accompanied by bowls of salt and cayenne pepper and lime wedges. Then it's on to carrot and coriander soup, served hot or cold. Lamb shanks spiced with a ginger-garlic paste, cumin seeds and red chiles. Irish stew (yes, Irish stew). Cashew cream chicken, with its "thick, creamy" gravy. Caramelized fried rice. And a cauliflower custard.

Which recipe will most tempt you? I vote for the custard. It took me just minutes to prepare. It was, like so many great dishes, even better the second day. And, I can happily report, it was at once as familiar as quiche and exotic as...well, Bombay.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An affair to remember, October 10, 2007

By 

Larry Bain (San Francisco) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: My Bombay Kitchen: Traditional and Modern Parsi Home Cooking (Hardcover)

Like many great affairs, it began in the bedroom and moved to the kitchen. I was so entranced by Ms. Ichaporia-King's writing that I had the book at my bedside for weeks of enticing, and entrancing late night reading. I then brought the book into my kitchen for what I anticipate will be a lifetime of delicious meals. I used to cook for profit, but now just for pleasure and it is a book that can be either inspirational (oh, I think I will try that spice combination with my old favorite pork dish) or instructional (so that is how you make chili pickles) and most often both. I hate when Amazon says "people who liked this book, also liked..." But I will say for people who liked Simple French Food by Richard Olney, The Zuni Cookbook by Judy Rogers, or Nose to Tail Eating by Fergus Henderson, they will adore this book. I now have a little Bombay in my kitchen, and everyone is thrilled about my latest affair.