Rosh's Reviews

AUTHOR: Victoria Grace Elliott GENRE: Graphic Nonfiction PUBLICATION DATE: November 30, 2021 RATING: 4 stars. In a Nutshell: A graphical non-fiction exploring the development of popular desserts. Contains a good mix of history, pseudo-interviews, stories, and recipes. Quite comprehensive and entertaining. A tempting [pun intended!] read for those with a sweet tooth. 😄 If you ask various people what they consider the yummiest dish, chances are that a majority of the responses you receive will mention some or the other dessert. Even those of us who don't have a sweet tooth enjoy at least some dessert once in a while. Cakes, ice-creams, donuts, pies,… ( gulab jamun, kulfi, and kaju katli for my desi friends 🤤) – there is at least one dessert we like, if not love. But have you ever thought about how these desserts came into being? This graphical book aims to enlighten and entertain you at the same time on the scrumptious topic of desserts. There are eight chapters in this book, cover...

AUTHOR: Sapna Punjabi GENRE: Cookery PUBLICATION DATE: April 8, 2025. RATING: 3.75 stars. In a Nutshell: A good cookbook for those wanting to try the two staples of Indian cuisine: dal (lentils) and chawal (rice). Great variety of recipes, combined with the power of ayurvedic knowledge and nutritional expertise. Love how it doesn’t compromise on authenticity of process or accuracy of nomenclature just to make the recipes *palatable* to Westerners. I found the recipes easy enough for beginners. But the ingredients and recipes are mostly familiar to me as I belong to this culture, so my opinion won't exactly be representative of Western opinion. Dal-chawal in its various options is comfort food for most Indians. While there is no standard “Indian cuisine” ( we have a variation in cuisine after every few hundred kilometres! ), dal and chawal are used in myriad ways across the country. Chawal is the Hindi word for rice. Dal is Hindi for all types of lentils. The book expands the defin...

AUTHOR: Sonal Ved GENRE: Food nonfiction, History RATING: 3.25 stars. In a Nutshell: More suited to food history lovers than to general foodies. Read only if you like history. Luckily for the book, I do. No one is more surprised than I am that, after not having read a single food book all these years, I have now read two in 2023 itself. And in both cases, the title was the reason. The samosa is a favourite snack of mine, and when I saw this amazing title, I jumped at the book without doing any due diligence. I am sure many of my Indian friends will feel the same about such an appealing book name. Sadly, the title is quite click bait in intent and misleading in effect. To know what the book is about, you need to focus more on the tagline: “The Story of Where 'Indian' Food Really Came From.” This represents the book precisely. People always talk about Indian dishes and Indian food. Even I claim that “Indian food” is my favourite across whatever cuisines I have tried. But the fact...

AUTHOR: Sumayya Usmani GENRE: Memoir, Cookbook. RATING: 4.25 Stars. In a Nutshell: A beautiful homage to childhood influences on our cooking, written in the form of a memoir cum cookbook. Contains plenty of visibly-yummy Pakistani recipes. “Sumayya Usmani is an internationally published food writer, author and cookery teacher, who is recognised by BBC Good Food as the UK’s ‘go-to’ expert for Pakistani cuisine.” Thus says the author’s bio on Goodreads.  But I hadn’t heard of her at all! If you scan through my bookshelves, whether actual (at home) or virtual (on Goodreads), you won’t find any cookbook. The reason is that I don’t like cooking. I cook to live, and not live to cook. I haven’t killed anyone yet with my attempts in the kitchen (and my kids love my cooking – Phew!), but I am not the kind to search for new recipes and experiment with cuisines in my kitchen. As such, I was always a hundred per cent sure that I would *never* read & review a cookery book. Why this change...