Shared Tables: Family Stories and Recipes from Poona to LA

When Kaumudi Marathé moved to the US from India, she never thought she'd be a famous chef, food writer and unofficial spokesperson for Indian cuisine abroad. Shared Tables is her memoir of an unlikely career enriched and shaped by family history, stories, memorable meals and staunch friendships.

In this book, Kaumudi explores her roots in the Konkanastha and Saraswat clans, recalling her immersion in their classic Marathi cuisines. Her peripatetic childhood, spent in places as diverse as Poona, Canada, Nagaland, Hyderabad and Wales, let her taste and savour the many flavours that came her way. As an adult, her choice of journalism as a profession took her to the Bombay of the heady 1980s and '90s, where she met the challenges of adulthood and authorship, navigating marriage and deadlines, while constantly exploring the many offerings of the city. Her eventual move to LA, a city that encouraged her to dream of an entirely new way of living, enabled her to set up the first Indian cooking school in the US, Un-Curry, alongside her restaurant and catering company. Throughout her journey, Kaumudi shared tables with a variety of friends and family, all of them laughing and eating together and helping one another grow into their present selves.

Via anecdotes, recipes and photographs, Kaumudi Marathé illustrates how love and food build a shared connection amongst diverse cultures, countries, backgrounds and professions. Shared Tables is a feast for the mind, heart and soul.

'Kaumudi Marathé' is a journalist, chef and teacher. Born in Poona, she has spent more than half her life abroad, but still feels strong ties to her native land. Her love of Indian food, music and history has inspired her to drive across the subcontinent, write about India's temples, and document its culinary traditions. She is the author of, among other books, 'The Essential Marathi Cookbook and Maharashtrian Cuisine: A Family Treasury'. In fact, her reverence for the food of her homeland sparked a personal rebellion in 2007, in which she made it her mission to bring Indian flavours other than curry to kitchens around the world with Un-Curry (www.un-curry.com), the first organic Indian cooking school, catering company and pop-up restaurant in Los Angeles. Her work appears in 'Saveur', 'Paste', 'LA Parent' and other publications. She makes time for long-distance running, being a mother to her ballerina daughter, Keya, and hiking in the local Southern California mountains with her partner, Dean, and her Tibetan terrier, Ever.