All good stories start at the beginning, mine starts with food. Not so much the cooking—it’s all about eating. I don’t have any warm and fuzzy Grandma stories of spices being stirred in the kitchen and meals conjured for the family. Neither of my grandmothers cooked nor did my mother. Unless I had a maths exam then she’d make me kheema-pav (spicey mutton mince with bread). I loved it, but the nerves never let me hold it down.
Being the youngest of three, born to my parents in their heydays I got to everywhere, especially when they traveled. I was also allowed to eat everything. (Even bugs—but more on that later.) It didn’t matter whether they were eating it or not, I was always encouraged to try different things and decide for myself. My Mum who loathed fish—would always let me order it and help debone it for me, no matter how much it made her balk.
Growing up in a melting pot like Bombay was probably the luckiest thing to have happened to me. India has 28 states each having its own culture and cuisine and all of which you can find in Bombay. So something as simple as sauteed okra, a staple dish at most Indian homes is cooked differently from home to home. At mine, we predominantly stick with Gujarati-style of cooking things—so it’s very lightly flavored with curry leaves and cumin. At my Punjabi friend’s house, it’s much spicier and when I used to go to my Parsi Grandmother’s house, it would be served with fried eggs on top. This fascinated me and unwittingly, food became a way for me to learn a little more about the world.
By the time I was a teenager, foreign television networks had wiggled into India—and I lapped them all up! I was glued to The Travel and Living Channel. Nigella Lawson, Anthony Bourdain, Andrew Zimmern—they were Gods and I wanted to be them! To walk around incredibly stocked and planned kitchens, or some obscure restaurant in a bustling marketplace and share the excitement of I’d eaten. Thanks to my parents, I did get to travel and along the way learned that the trip might end, but my curiosity about different cultures never would.
Grad school brought me to San Francisco and Frank, my husband kept me here (I promise you, Cali wine had nothing to do with it.) Like most port cities—Bombay, New York, Venice—San Francisco has a fascinating history and is a large part of why I was inspired to start this blog. (San Francisco and the prospect of bugging Frank through this collaboration.)
What can you expect from this little spec on the web? A few recipes, food and drink history, travel stories, and beautiful illustrations (by Frank). Travel and places change you as do people. Their stories move us, make us laugh and feel. Now more than ever, during these unprecedented times, I miss those dinner table tales and learning about a small town on the foothills of the Himalayas or cheese from Spain, place, or culture I have yet to experience. I hope this space provides some semblance of that and if you have a story you’d like to share please reach out to: content@boozefoodlatitude.com, and we’d be honored to find it a place.