Curated by Tarana Husain Khan, and edited by Claire Chambers and Siobhan Lambert-Hurley, Forgotten Foods will see the return of Desi Delicacies contributors Rana Safvi, Sadaf Hussain, Bina Shah, among others, alongside new recruits to discuss and explore the challenges linked to local communities and food sustainability in India.
The book brings together delectable essays and recipes from regions, households and food cultures previously unexplored, like Kerala’s Moplah community, Manipur’s Pangal community, the cuisine of Ladakhi Muslims, the significance of Kashmiri home food, Sri Lanka’s distinct Malay cuisine, the history of the Kolkata biryani and the Hyderabadi nahari, Afghan food in Berlin, the legendary poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s culinary habits as recounted by his daughter, among many other literary treats.
Forgotten Foods is a worthy addition to modern food writing, providing entertainment, education and satisfaction in equal measure, while intertwining history with memory and culture, and offering new ways to think about food, identity and our histories as much as our present.
