For her latest book, ‘Bene Appétit: The Cuisine of the Indian Jews,’ author Esther David travels across India, engaging with Jewish communities to learn how to cook traditional, highly guarded dishes.
“Zoo life was quite international. I had Gujarati pals when I was little. And coming to terms with the fact that I am Jewish. So I was living in three worlds,” novelist Esther David says over the phone from Ahmedabad.
“Food is memory,” she writes in the introduction to her new book, Bene Appétit: The Cuisine of the Indian Jews, published by HarperCollins. Food is a form of culture. Families and communities are linked by food.” As a result, Esther thought it was time to go across the country to capture their traditions, in the face of a fast eroding collective memory of the Indian Jewish experience. She discovered tightly guarded recipes for chik-cha-halva, jumping potatoes, agar agar jelly, and even a Jewish biryani in the process.
