When a Nobel Prize winning economist writes a book infused with delicious recipes you are intrigued. The fact that there are more than recipes to the book — but loads of slice-of-life sociological vignettes — spices things up a bit more.
In Chhaunk, Abhijit Banerjee takes forward the book he wrote during the Covid years — Cooking to Save Your Life, a lovely cookbook that was wonderfully illustrated by Cheyenne Olivier. As he says, “Writing and presenting the book had made us much more aware of all the ways in which talking about food was like talking about everything else in the world — from politics to history to economics to culture — that does not need to be academic or polemical. It was a way to plant ideas in the soft soil of food memories and kitchen stories, where they can germinate and grow…”
That thought resulted in a monthly column for the Sunday edition of a mainstream Indian newspaper. Chhaunk is a compilation of those columns, with some really lovely illustrations by the talented Olivier. But Banerjee has also added 50-odd recipes that complement the essay’s themes. And that actually is the highpoint of the book. For instance, take the essay on summer, global warming and the explosion in air-conditioning in India, and the worries about carbon guzzling. That essay is complemented by a few cooling recipes that are summer favourites like the Mexican Horchata, a Vietnamese-inspired mango tea and just cucumber water.
Although Banerjee says that this book differs from the earlier cookbook in that there is more to read here about social science and ideas, to me it’s the recipes that absolutely delight, and make me at once want to get into the kitchen and try them out. Indeed, I actually did so — rushing to make the Nepalese Daikon Salad at the end of the first chapter. The recipe had some simple ingredients and looked easy. With sweet radish in abundance being the season, it worked and was an instant hit at home.
Simple and homely
A lot of the recipes are simple and homely. A few elaborate ones like the Paya Nehari do find their way too. The range of dishes is formidable and really cosmopolitan, straddling from Shakshuka to pastas and gnocchi to Maharashtrian thalipeeth and south Indian egg biryani. I was thrilled to find there are as many vegetarian dishes as non-vegetarian. Predictably there is some amount of Bengali nostalgia evident in dishes like Cholar dal. One small complaint though — the ingredient quantities in some of the recipes that Banerjee dishes out are huge — more for serving a huge family or a dinner party rather than a small nuclear household. He could have added a line on how many these will serve.
The essays themselves are interesting enough but a mixed bag. They touch upon a lot of societal issues, from the travails of women at work to the conspicuous consumption in Indian weddings, especially the Ambani one, in a chatty anecdotal way. His prescriptions are a bit too idealistic and occasionally take a moralising tone (for instance, he wishes the Ambanis’ next extravagance can be an act of generosity). What’s nice though is that through the essays we get a peep into Banerjee’s childhood and an introduction to his mother, who sounds a formidable lady, and a lot of idiosyncrasies of Bengali culture. It’s behavioural economics from his own personal lens, so to say.
Most of the stuff sounds commonsensical. But there are occasionally new insights too. For instance, the essay on migration surprised me — he says new migrants overestimate how much they will earn and also they have a vastly exaggerated sense of the risks, and they fear dying away from home.
Reading the essays is like listening to a good erudite conversationalist who connects divergent ideas seamlessly. It’s an easy read. But to me the book is a good buy, more for the tadka provided by the recipes.
Title: Chhaunk: On Food, Economics and Society
Author: Abhijit Banerjee
Illustrated by: Cheyenne Olivier
Publisher: Juggernaut
Price: ₹899
