I stumbled upon Madhur Jaffrey’s ‘A Taste of India’ at the legendary Strand Book stall in Bombay, in 1997. Sadly, Strand shut down and with it a legacy of amazing books and reading culture in Fort, Bombay disappeared.

Madhur’s little tome blew my mind and instantly had me hooked. I now own quite a collection of her books including her lovely memoir, ‘Climbing Mango Trees’.

Published in 1985, Taste of India is filled with anecdotes, tales and photos from across this mighty country, it called to my heart: a culinary atlas of the country. At the time, I did not know the book was accompanied by a BBC TV series that I managed to see snatches of across the years, on obscure channels. I am still in awe of what Taste of India created on the Indian culinary, recipe book and TV scene almost forty years ago, before the internet and mobile phones. This truly is a labour of love and sweat.

A Taste of India is more than a cookbook by author and acclaimed actress, Jaffrey, who hails from Delhi. She has created quite a legacy and is India’s foremost curry queen, taking our culinary heritage across the oceans. The book changed how I looked at recipe books: from just following precise instructions ( I was already heavily into recipe books and upping my own recipe repertoire), this book spoke about people and places and traditions. Every region is written about at length, going into details of people, culture and culinary traditions, including stories of friends and unsung heroes.

The book opens on a story of the khomchawala from Jaffrey s childhood, neatly brining to the fore how many flavours we grow up with a are used to eating in India.

Suddenly food was part of a much larger picture than what I gleaned from magazines and imagined people might eat: it became an actual world of food- culture and heritage.

jaffeey’s adventures and cooking lessons had me enthralled, and I fell in love with food and travel memoirs forever. I was amazed by what India truly has to offer and was inspired hugely by her travels. She remains the first lady of food and travel writing for me ever since. I love her recipes, several of which are part of my daily table fare: good old fashioned homestyle gems ranging from khatti- meethi bhindi with amchoor, palak chicken, aloo Gobi, mutton korma.

Madhur Jaffrey is a genuine lover of Indian food and an expert in her subject. Her anecdotes are always charming, filled with tales from her life in Delhi, her film and theatre years, friend Ismail Merchant and her beloved daughter, Sakina. All her recipes are just lovely, like your favourite Nani or auntie has shared her years of kitchen experience with you, and they all turn out perfect.

I have grown up with access to beautiful books and loved recipe books of all kinds since I was little; I still have my first cookbook, an English Children’s cookbook, which my child has also learned from.

Some books were large, with colour photos, some were tiny or more textbook-ish hotel school tomes. Even now I obsessively collect recipe books but I am equally a collector of food memoir and food writing, and I read everything from Gourmet to Nigella and Anthony Bourdain.

I suppose I am a cookbook gourmand. No cookbook is not worth a glance. I first read the word pimento in class 5 in a little spiritual children’s journal. I never knew what it meant until years later. This was before the internet and during canned red bits of pimentoes in brine.

Living in a small town meant we made everything from scratch and my mother really sharpened her culinary skills with such exotic fare as cauliflower au gratin, jam tarts, pear mice in jelly, scones and other glorious dishes from A Cookery Year, which was an encyclopaedia on food from Reader’s Digest. It had all the months and all the fruit and vegetables hand drawn in colour. There were photos of beautiful hand decorated Easter eggs, elaborate racks of lamb, strawberries and English high teas, a house made of chocolate cake and sweets and so on.

Long ago I realised how visual food really is. A taste of India evokes that on each page. You literally smell the chaat and meaty aromas from the curries. Filled with stories from Chandni Chowk to Amritsar, Cochin to Calcutta- such a book has never been written before or since.