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4 BOOKS THAT CELEBRATE FOOD

REBEL HOMEMAKER: FOOD, FAMILY, LIFE

Drew Barrymore

November 2 is the release date for Drew Barrymore’s first-ever cookbook with her “culinary partner in crime”, Chef Pilar Valdes. Rebel Homemaker: Food, Family and Life will feature recipes interspersed with anecdotes from the actor’s personal life. The cover features Barrymore slurping on a bowl of pasta. She revealed on her eponymous talk show that she has been considering the idea of collaborating with Valdes for a while now. Food and Valdes’s friendship, she said, were “a huge saving grace and something I could hook into when my life felt so floating.”

BENE APPÉTIT: THE CUISINE OF INDIAN JEWS

Esther David

Sahitya Akademi Award-winning author and artist Esther David’s latest book is a holistic portrait of the little-known Bene Israeli community that has lived in India since 75 CE. She lays out a moveable feast, with heartwarming anecdotes and simple yet recipes. “(It) is about a fast-diminishing mini-microscopic Jewish community of India, and how it has preserved the tradition of food,’’ says David.

Herself a Bene Israeli Jew, David attempts to record some of the community’s traditions before they are lost, describing its lifestyle, customs and food habits in detail, and also revealing some closely-guarded recipes of Indian Jewish dishes such as chik-cha halwa, rose biscuits, jumping potatoes, hameen, arook, Jewish biryani, pakoda curry, chicken with gongura leaves, agar-agar jelly and many more. The pages are illuminated with illustrations rendered in the author’s trademark style.