India Post News Service
There is nothing like biting into the ambrosial flesh of a ripe plum, its juice dripping down one's lips, throat and hands. It is with the sweet memory of this ecstatic pleasure that I share the following recipe," writes award winning author, model/actress and host of Bravo's Top chef, in her dazzling new book Tangy Tart Hot and Sweet.
Two hundred and fifty recipes grooving to the rhythms of world cuisine as Padma Lakshmi takes us on a journey from the seaside town of Besant Nagar, in Chennai to Morocco, Italy, Mexico, Korea, the Serengeti plains and the markets of Los Angeles, Cuba and Tokyo.
The sheer vitality of the book, the ebullience of the magnificent photographs by Ditte Isager demands you to rush to the kitchen and whip up that irresistible Keralan Crab cakes, Green Dragon Curry with Shrimp, Moroccan Bisteya, Merguez Sausage with Fennel and Couscous, and Chilled Papaya Mousse with Cointreau.
This is a cookbook of showmanship as you see stunning photographs of Padma lost in a reverie with a bowl of spinach, Padma biting into succulent Krispy Chicken, Padma eating pasta, Padma in rapture over a Chocolate Amaretto Ice-cream, Padma strolling down a Chinese market street with a bag of groceries, Padma when she was young, a teenager, a party host...and so it goes.
Padma is the entertainer, the charming host, the cookbook author inviting you into her world with simple, relaxed recipes, a droll sense of humor, captivating you with her personal recollections of her mother's cooking, her grandfather, her cousins, her long lost boyfriend, her scrapbook of memories. She shares her life with us and sprinkles anecdotes of Jhoti ,The Peanut Man, The Rose Witch who would not share her roses with Padma, a Peruvian baby sitter, and the boyfriend who did not thrill her as much as the kitchen in Mexico.
She informs us that lemon grass is an important component of Tiger Balm, and lyrically tempts us in a recipe with "glistening oranges, jeweled with dried cranberries, which sit regally in a luxurious bed of dark spinach that's laced with the spiky fragrance of basil." She urges you not to give yourself any reason not to make a scrumptious dessert like Lychee Granita.
Who does not want to be inspired by her travels and her passion for world cuisine? Whether it is the rustic simplicity of a herb salad or the exotic complex flavors of international cuisine she defines her passion for food and the flavors of the world. She believes that living in America her life has been touched by the many cultures that coexist among us.
Divided into 10 chapters the book includes Starters and Appetizers, Salads, Soups, Fish and Seafood, Poultry, Meats, Vegetables, Desserts, Drinks, Pickles and Chutneys.
Padma Lakshmi devotes a whole page at times to instructing us how to peel a pomegranate, how to boil and peel eggs, and make tamarind gravy. How naïve is that. But she is sensual and compelling even when doing so. Like a piece of music she blends her narrative with tips, ingredients and methods seamlessly and you soar to giddy heights in a food epiphany.
A kind of call and response especially when you realize that right through the book which was eight years in the making, there are the surging traditional rhythms of Indian cooking crafted with a spontaneous energy into world cuisine.
The recipes are informal, fun, easy to make and she gives alternatives to ingredients renewing the excitement of cooking. I finished reading the book on a lazy Saturday afternoon, with the gentle winter sun coming through the trees, warming me while the torrent of foods, tastes, flavors of Padma Lakshmi's book held me in thrall. A perfect afternoon. And then when I shut the book I laughed helplessly and in abandon. When has a cookbook diva and we know that every bookstore has shelves groaning with tomes of powerful , erudite, gurus and spice goddesses of food culture, ever had the audacity to confess: "I stopped keeping chilli honey butter in my fridge. It was too damn tempting." Padma Lakshmi and her book is damn exhilirating.
The 37 year old model/actress/author has dedicated the book to SR. She has been recently divorced from writer Salman Rushdie. People Magazine voted her among its most 100 beautiful women. Padma Lakshmi has been interviewed by over 100 publications over the last two months. She acted in the Sandokan series, Glitter with Mariah Carey, Boom with Amitabh Bachchan, the Mistress of Spices with Aishwarya Rai, and is now working on making a film from Jhumpa Lahiri's Pulitzer Prize winning collection of stories The Interpreter of Maladies.
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