What the Palate Remembers

A collection of essays on South Asian Muslim food seasoned with a sprinkling of promising recipes

- Ruchir Joshi

FORGOTTEN FOODS Memories and Recipes from Muslim South Asia Edited by Siobhan Lambert-Hurley, Tarana Husain Khan and Claire Chambers PICADOR INDIA

As we learn from the preface, Forgotten Foods is an anthology of essays, anecdotes and meditations on South Asian Muslim food and one that is generously garnished with recipes. Indeed, the best aspect of the book is that along with the rich information and histories it lays out, it also doubles as a no-nonsense cookbook.

The book grew as one offshoot of a research and public engagement project entitled 'Forgotten Food: Culinary Memories, Local Heritage and Lost Agricultural Varieties in India. This volume follows Desi Delicacies (2020), a collection of fiction and essays around South Asian food, which also came about from the work being done on the project.

Many of the essays in Forgotten Foods were meant to appear on the digital news website Scroll as a regular series but, as with so many other things, Covid-19 played spoiler and the full plan never materialised. Happily, all the pieces are now gathered in this book. The writings came together along with other projects including videos and experimental performances and, at the end of the preface there are QR codes through which these can be viewed.