Shoba Narayan reflects on youth with reverence and awe. She reminisces about school yards and road trips. She describes her family and talks about food.
In "Monsoon Diary: A Memoir with Recipes," she recalls key moments and significant phases in her South Indian childhood. She details her introduction as a young adult to American habits and manners. Through it all, she speaks with a voice that is confident and lyrical.
Narayan divides her discussion into two parts. The first half deals primarily with her experiences in Madras, India, in a household surrounded by family and food. The second half focuses on her adventures as a college student - and, a few years later, as a newlywed - in the United States.
In chapters such as "Sun-Dried Vegetables on the Roof" and "Vaikom House," all of which conclude with at least one or two recipes, Narayan writes about the role food played in her upbringing, the way people connected in the kitchen and celebrated at the table.
She writes about the school lunches her mother packed - okra curry, for instance, or idlis, rice-and-lentil dumplings - and the bartering rituals she and her classmates devised over time. On good days, she got bite-sized pieces of everyone's lunch.
She remembers the zesty vegetable stew her friend Amina's mother made, and the mango relish her friend Sheela's mother prepared. Seasoned with sesame oil, mustard-seed powder, asafetida and chili powder, it was "a juicy, spicy, lip-smacking condiment that we never tired of."
Narayan writes about the fruit trees and flowers her father planted on land he would eventually develop. In addition to six coconut trees, there were neem, banana, guava and mango trees as well as jasmine, hibiscus, chrysanthemum and bougainvillea bushes.
When her father hired an architect to design a house on the property, he told the man he could not remove any vegetation on the small lot. He extolled the health benefits of the neem leaves and the beauty of the mango leaves, directing the architect to build around it all. "The resulting construction," Narayan says, "was odd-shaped and rambling, with rooms ducking in and out between trees and shrubs."
She writes also about her maternal grandmother, Nalla-ma, a cheerful and affectionate woman. The days she spent with her, Narayan says, were some of the best days of her childhood. In the mornings, she sat in her grandmother's kitchen, sipped Ovaltine and watched her skillfully mix vegetables and spices.
"Carrots with ghee for growth, potatoes with ginger to soothe, beans with garlic to rejuvenate, onions or asafetida to balance," Narayan says. "Meals were a pageant of colors and flavors, all combed together with an array of spices. Cumin and coriander were the backbone, supported by black mustard seeds and fenugreek, while fennel provided the top note."
In the afternoons, she relaxed with Nalla-ma and listened attentively to her tales. "She had a phenomenal memory that stored colors, textures, sounds and smells," the author says, "and a gift for shaping them into spellbinding narratives."
Nalla-ma was an umbilical cord to her past, a connection to her family history. Years later, after Narayan had married and settled in the United States, she and her husband invited her grandmother to join them on a two-week vacation across the country, traveling from New York City to Los Angeles.
She documents her grandmother's roadside impressions, her insistence on Indian food and her slow acclimation to American tastes, in the chapter "Descent of the Relatives."
In New York City, Nalla-ma would eat only Indian foods, the vegetable curries, rice, rasam, pongal and pickles she prepared herself. On the road, however, her options quickly diminished. She would need to relent.
"In Du Bois, Pennsylvania," Narayan says, "Nalla-ma accompanied me to a grocery store. After much deliberation, she picked out a carton of 2 percent milk and some fruits. In Cleveland she tasted strawberry yogurt for the first time and decided that she liked it.
"In South Bend, Indiana, Nalla-ma declared that Dunkin' Donuts coffee tasted just like the filter coffee back home. For the rest of the trip we (stopped) every time we saw a Dunkin' Donuts so Nalla-ma could have a large coffee accompanied by a French cruller, which, according to her, tasted just like jilebi."
By the time they arrived in Los Angeles, Nalla-ma had made several concessions. "She would take salad without the dressing," Narayan says, "pasta without the garlic, Mexican food without the cheese, and Thai food without the lemongrass. We had come a long way."
Stories such as these, coupled with descriptions of Indian foods such as rasam, a lentil broth with tomatoes and cilantro, and vada-pav, a deep-fried potato pancake spiced with ginger, garlic, green chiles and cumin, give "Monsoon Diary: A Memoir with Recipes" an interesting bite and enticing flavors.
Whether discussing members of her extended South Indian family or detailing the things she grew up eating and continues to eat, Narayan keeps us entertained. Her writing is honest, evocative and engaging, her passages on food nothing short of mouth-watering.
(A version of this review appeared originally in The Oakland Tribune.)
Vegetable Stew
2 tsp. olive or canola oil
1 small onion, thinly sliced
2 green chiles, Thai or serrano, slit in half lengthwise
4 1/4-inch slices ginger
4 garlic cloves, diced
2 medium potatoes, cubed
1 small carrot, chopped into 1/2-inch pieces
10 green beans, sliced into 1/2-inch pieces
1 tsp. salt
2 cups coconut milk (available in cans at Asian markets)
10 curry leaves
Heat the oil in a medium-sized stainless steel vessel and saute the onion, chiles, ginger and garlic until the onions turn golden. Add the chopped vegetables, salt and 1 cup water. Cover and cook over a low flame until the vegetables are soft. Stir in the coconut milk and heat until it just starts to boil. Remove from heat. Garnish with curry leaves. Makes 4 servings.
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