Hello,

I’m Priyanka (Anka for short,) a happy resident of Hanover, NH. If you are going to be taking up on my suggestion as to what to put in your mouth, I think it is only fair that you get comfortable and get to know me.

I’m from a not so small town all the way down in South India called Madras where the summer days are so hot that food doesn’t even act as a teensy distraction. I grew up in the kitchen, insisting on sitting right next to the stove, watching my mom sprinkle cumin powder and asafoetida into the rasam, my eyes tracking her every movement, trying to guess her next move. For the larger part of life, I’ve gotten out of bed to the scent of dosas, slowly turning golden brown from the sesame seed oil swirled around the edges. My mom usually served it with a jaggery– chilli pickle that will make you lose all perspective of the decent amount of food a person can eat. What I would give to be back in her kitchen, telling her that it’s my last dosa, both knowing that I don’t really mean it. But I digress. My mom comes from a long line of outstanding cooks; my grandfather even owned a restaurant in the small town of Cudappah, India, and my grandmother brought so much life to her food that it made you want to sink to your knees and thank the universe for giving us the concept of food.

Throughout the five years of undergrad studying to be a lawyer, I rarely cooked anything more than Maggi (like Ramen) and was subjected to really bland food made by the owners of the paying guest hostel I was staying in. My first year of being a lawyer, trying to grab the corporate world by its horns, I was too busy working seven days a week, trying to get on a partner track to even set up a kitchen, let alone cook in it. When I moved back to my hometown, my mom was having no more of me eating junk food. Taking matters in her own hands, she helped me set up my kitchen, but my experimenting with recipes lasted only until I realised that I have to eat the food all on my own.

One day, I came to the conclusion that while I love the subject, law was not my piece of cake (mmm.. Cake. There I go distracting myself with food once again.) I quit and joined a storytelling company. As a part of the company, my job was to read story books and travel across the country telling stories to kids. People say you cannot make your hobby your job. Pah! What do they know. I was in heaven, living my life between two racks of colour filled stories about rats who outsmarted monsters and wild things partying on magical islands. Soon, I started writing delightful stories for them kids and before you knew it, I was applying to Dartmouth to study creative writing.

I brought with me to the US nothing for the kitchen, but within weeks filled it with small mason jars of different coloured masalas that I had scooped into plastic baggies from the local co-op. The oven which I had, until then, not had the pleasure of being introduced to, sat proud in the middle of the mega-sized kitchen that I shared with three other grad students, and that’s where my love affair started. I was suddenly surrounded by people younger than me, who were being away from home for the first time in the their lives and it was on me to make this place feel like home. I pretended that I was King Arthur each time I picked my tiny Victorinox knife, my weapon of choice to save the world. I shared my kitchen with my new friends and we passive-aggressively argued about the use of jaggery in the rasam or even the proper method to make masala chai. The first time I used the oven, I pulled a crispy, browned, bubbly apple pie out of the oven and I was filled with this sense of accomplishment, a feeling that had eluded me as I fumbled my way about in a new college, in a new country. It was like a rush, and I had to cook again and again.

Food became such an obsession that I wrote a coffee table cookbook for my graduate thesis. I’ve had a beautiful journey with food and an even better one with cooking. It has made me feel loved, sometimes frustrated, occasionally exhausted, often exhilarated, and every now and again, it has even made me feel deeply sad; about missing the people I love, wishing that they were here with me to taste my cooking. I want to share this great expedition with all of you!

Follow me into my kitchen and I’ll show you that there is nothing quite as simple or as amazing as the feeling of pulling off the perfect cook.