More than Just Biryani

Ask anyone, and I mean anyone, what comes to mind when they think of Muslim food and the answer is always Biryani.

See, I don’t mind. I love biryani like everybody else but I thought it was high time someone changed the misconceptions out there that people had regarding Muslim food. With that lofty ideal in mind, I set about harassing my mother, mother in law and aunts for recipes of our food as we like to call it. Because Muslim cuisine like any other Indian cuisine absorbs the local and regional flavours with ease, and by our food, I refer to food from South India, more specifically Vellore, Chennai and a bit of Bangalore thrown in for good measure.

With that done, I started writing the original More than Just Biryani book back in 2009. At 8000 words the ink ran dry. If only it was a case of getting another pen, I’d have done it willingly but I write on the computer and what I meant was that I couldn’t go past that. I didn’t have anything to say unless there was the possibility of a good story in the offing. I put aside this book and decided to forget about what a good idea it had been and got busy writing my other books. Two years and four books later, I came back to this folder, pondered and wondered and finally decided to write the book that it is today.

So here we are. More Than Just Biryani is the story of three women and food is an important player in their lives. Ok, that did not do any justice to the 100,000 word (ahem) book I wrote.

But then, you have to read the book to know what I mean. Click here to see what the book is about.