Masala Farm

Description

"Masala Farm" is a memoir about a city boy who absconds to a country roost. Indian author Suvir Saran's move from NYC to a farm in upstate New York, where he raises livestock and grows much of his own food. The recipes, organised by season, include classic rustic American recipes made from the fruit of his land and livestock, as well as dishes that speak to Saran's Indian heritage. Memoir, essays, tips, and gorgeous photography frame the recipes.

Already a respected food authority at age 35, Saran is making great contributions to furthering appreciation of Indian food in America. Most recently, The Culinary Institute of America named him Chairman, Asian Culinary Studies for its World Cuisines Council. Saran has taught all over the USA privately and for culinary centres. Saran enjoys working on his 68-acre American Masala Farm in upstate New York. Raquel Pelzel is a freelance cookbook author and food writer. She previously collaborated with Suvir Saran on American Masala, which was included in the New York Times' cookbook rounup for 2007. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and son. Ben Fink is a freelance photographer who has photographed for New York Magazine and Random House, among others. He lives and works in New York.

Masala Farm is as fresh as a carrot just pulled from the earth. The wholesome and appealing recipes spring directly from a passionate way of living and celebrating the rhythms, diversity and surprises of life. Readers will be inspired by the food and just may be inspired to flee their jobs and find an idyllic green haven for themselves. Suvir Saran writes enchantingly about friends around the table, goose-raiding ravens, food and community, the richness of goat milk, and his inclusive concept of family. A brilliant masala! Frances Mayes - Author, Under the Tuscan Sun and Every Day in Tuscany To find work that is fulfilling and rewarding, that's luck. But to build not just a career but a life around your passion, in this case, for food, as Suvir and Charlie have done with American Masala Farm, is good fortune almost too breathtaking to imagine. To deepen their understanding of our sustenance all the way back to the land, and to the animals and plants that also sustain and are sustained by it, to reorganize complex modern lives around the seasons, as nature intended-what could feel more organic, more real, more right? Yet what really seems to motivate them in this ongoing project is not just to enjoy this idyll on their own, but a deep desire to give and share, with their guests, their students, their friends-and now, with you, holding this beautiful book, Masala Farm. When I first saw photos of the farmhouse, I said to Suvir, I can't believe you painted it turmeric! When he told me that it came that way, it was clear that American Masala Farm was meant to be. How lucky, indeed, that we all are welcome there. Ted Allen, host, Food Network's Chopped, author, The Food You Want to Eat How rare it is to have the ability to synchronize your life on a farm with life in a restaurant! With just-picked ingredients tied to each of upstate New York's four seasons, Suvir and Charlie's recipes come to life, and guide the reader to explore gastronomy from a horticultural perspective. Alice Waters - Owner, Chez Panisse Restaurant Suvir and Charlie have created a home in the countryside made of magic, an impeccable sense of fashion and an art collection from their travels to every corner of the world. Masala Farm is the perfect blend of The Selby and Green Acres, where their chickens roost in style and produce the most sublime eggs I've ever eaten. The experience of creating food together, with ingredients from the farm and local community had an intensity of flavor and sense of love I never thought could be recreated outside of that kitchen. But, the recipes from the Masala Farm cookbook bring all those flavors and the feeling of their bucolic farmhouse to my kitchen in the city. Zoe Francois - Author, Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day and Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day Two urban men, Charlie from West Virginia, Suvir from New Delhi, India, fall in love with country life on remote American Masala Farm and woo the neighbors with Grandma Mae's biscuits, Masala fried chicken and an Indian Auntie's sensuous fruit cake in the globally inspired cooking of this marvelously gifted chef. Reading their intimate tales as they leap into local folkways and acquire an expanding family of heritage animals is a rich pairing with Suvir's delicious dishes -- at once familiar and surprising. Gael Greene, Author, Insatiable: Tales From a Life of Delicious Excess and InsatiableCritic.com Suvir and Charlie's Masala Farm represents everything I love about the food world. Globally inspired but growing where it is planted..... for them that means the deeply verdant hills of Upstate New York. Suvir and Charlie aren't out to save the world or obnoxiously climb on a soapbox and get too preachy. This is real food for real people, spun through the fabric of the lives of two men from opposite corners of the world who made their dream their home. Andrew Zimmern - Author, host and creator of Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern U