My Mother’s Kitchen: A Novel with Recipes
Revised Edition available April 2024
Reviews
“It makes perfect sense that recipes should slip into a story about life and its richness. They do so effortlessly, as it should be. I thoroughly enjoyed this lovely book about food, culture, and family in India. Adding the food element has the effect of making it somehow universal.”
-Deborah Madison, author of Vegetable Literacy and The New Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone
“Meera Ekkanath Klein brings the rich flavors and the sumptuous tastes of India to life in her first book, My Mother’s Kitchen. Part cookbook, part fiction, it introduces American readers to a world rarely glimpsed in the West. Klein offers easy-to-follow recipes and lifts the veil that has often concealed Indian life. Her memories of India, where she was born and raised, lifts this book far above the ordinary. A must-read for mothers and daughters eager to try new spices, My Mother’s Kitchen paints a portrait of an ancient culture of rare beauty and mouth-watering food.”
-Jonah Raskin, author of Field Days, A Year of Farming, Eating and Drinking Wine in California
“Any American writer whose focus is India faces a daunting task. Much literature has gone before and has helped create a fortress that might be called the India of the Mind. It’s everything from “Jungle Book” to “The Jewel in the Crown.”
Meera Ekkanath Klein’s collection of stories, My Mother’s Kitchen: A Novel With Recipes, set in the fictional South Indian town of Mahagiri, tries something new: the multi-sensual narrative. The author understands that human interactions take place within a framework of smells, often associated with the preparation and consumption of food. This stylistic tool adds a new dimension to the stories. Klein tells stories about families that unwind in the confines and security of a kitchen, where naturally the principals are often engaged in preparing food. The settings, like the stories themselves, are simple and unadorned. They unfold in bite-sized chunks, with occasional actual recipes inserted to bring home the point. The stories, like the recipes, are soothing and healing, and like the best of folk tales, they carry a useful message for living one’s life.
A smile comes to the reader’s face upon realizing that compassion, forgiveness and gratitude carry the day. It is the received wisdom of the dinner table.”
— William J. Drummond, Author and Professor of Journalism, University of Berkeley, Graduate School of Journalism.
“Don’t know about you, but when I hear the words ‘comfort food’ my thoughts go right to the Deep South. Say ‘Indian comfort food’ and the same thing happens—my mouth starts to water uncontrollably at the thought of lemon rice, coconut chutney, aviyal, vegetable sambar with those feather-light rice dumplings called iddlis, creamy cardamom-spiked payasam, and all the other delicacies that make Kerala cuisine so special…oh, my! Meera Klein is an exceptionally able and versatile cook with a finely tuned palate, and these recipes reflect all of that. Full disclosure: I’ve known her since she was a spirited little girl remarkably like Meena, the protagonist of My Mother’s Kitchen. What fun that she’s become as skilled at spinning a yarn as she is at turning out sumptuous meals!” - Carol Lee Flinders, author of Enduring Grace and At the Root of this Longing.