Annapurna's Bounty: Indian Food Legends Retold by Veena Gokhale

Mingling sweet, sour, and spicy notes, this inspiring retelling of diverse food legends from India, paired with delicious recipes, will feed mind, body, heart, and soul. 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.