The Calcutta Cookbook is much more than a cookery book—it is a culinary chronicle of travelers and traders who built the city that Job Charnock founded. Calcutta's chronicle began on a hot, wet August afternoon in 1690 when a hungry Charnock climbed off his ship on to the steps of a muddy ghat. The river was Hooghly and the place Sutanati… The story of Calcutta is told by three food lovers—the late gourmet chef and author of Bangla Ranna, Minakshi Das Gupta, and feature writers Bunny Gupta and Jaya Chaliah—who have collected recipes from all over the world. Many of these are family secrets of Calcuttans who have recreated Armenian, Jewish, Arabian, European, Chinese and Tibetan dishes with distinct Calcutta flavor. Through over two hundred tried and tested recipes ranging from the delicious Bengali Chingri Maacher Malai Curry to the biryani and kebabs of Kabul, and the Temperado, Vindaloo and Sorpotel of Goa, Calcutta unfolds as a gourmet’s paradise.

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Review

I'm originally from Calcutta and this book brought back a lot of my childhood memories. Excellent collection of recipes. Note that these are not just Bengali recipes, but recipes of foods that one finds all over Calcutta, such as Tibetan, Anglo-Indian, Muslim/Mughal, Chinese, Bengali, as well as general/ cosmopolitan foods. In addition they also have recipes for Calcutta street foods. If you're from Calcutta and want to recreate the foods of your childhood, this is about as authentic as it gets. --By kd on February 2, 2013

I received this book yesterday and found half an hour to browse through it. Seems like an excellent read with informative pages and food names in both Bengali and English along with their recipes. But, what I was really hoping for were some recipes and stories about Cal's historic and mouth watering street food and snacks - puchkas (gol gappas), jhal moori, etc. which don't seem to be mentioned. All the same it is a great book and definitely worth its price. --Amar Chaudhary Mar 1, 2013

This is real good collections of receipes. It is not just a cookbook but it gives complete culinary history of bengali cuisine.Hats off to the authors who gave us this beautiful book. You can only imagine how much time they would have spent, how many houses they would have visited to get every single receipe. If you like bengali food, this book is definite buy. I have tried some 4-5 receipes till now, and all are superhit. --Pradnya Vaidya Aug 16, 2012