Season: Big Flavors, Beautiful Food

by Nick Sharma
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Hardcover: 288 pages

Season: Big Flavors, Beautiful Food is one of the best looking cookbooks ever! Like, ever.

It’s no surprise it’s been nominated for a James Beard Award for Best Cookbook Photography. It’s also been named Best Cookbook by dozens of food writers for publications and websites like Food52, The New York Times, BBC, etc. The list goes on and on.

Sharma’s Season: Big Flavors, Beautiful Food is a master class in fusing the bold flavors of Indian cuisine with the traditional recipes of the South and California. It is a marriage and collision of flavors that was inspired by the new tastes he encountered after emigrating to the US.

Nigella Lawson of At My Table fame chimed in with this: “Quite simply beautiful food-wide-ranging, inspiring, and infused with an enlivening and generous sensibility.”

The combination of influences and the fusing of disparate traditions is explained here by Sharma himself:

“Mine is a story of a gay immigrant, told through food. It taught me to recognize the inherent tensions between originality and tradition, and to opt for the former without rejecting the latter.”

The recipes in Season: Big Flavors, Beautiful Food reflect this balance: Chat Masala-Grilled Pork Chops, Deviled Eggs with Creamy Tahini and Za’atar, and my favorite, Caprese Salad with Sweet Tamarind Dressing.

I highly recommend you check out Sharma’s blog, A Brown Table, and also pick up a copy of Season at Amazon while they still have copies. It’s selling like Papadam!

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