topics: |  food | recipe | india

In Ayurvedic thought, there are six types of body constitution or doshas:
kapha, pitta, and vAta, plus the three combinations; and five
temperaments: satvik, tamasik, rajasik, and _satvik-rajasik,
rajasik-tamasik (satvik and tamasik_ cannot go together).  "Soul food"
consists of determining what food would suit which body / personality, and
how these tie in with external variables like the seasons.

However, this rather interesting topic is really not addressed;
the discussion is airy and insubstantial. Despairingly, one searches for
answers, but none are to be found, e.g. the doshas relate to the three
elements - water, air, and fire - but the "relation" is never elaborated.
pitta tends to be elevated in the summer and in the rains, but
vAta may also be high - the only food prescription suggested is that
"ingredients that counteract pitta-vAta in summer and kapha-vAta during
rains are prescribed in Ayurveda".  What these ingredients are is not
alluded to.  It is clear that the author has hazy notions that are as airy
as the sanskrit terms liberally strewn everywhere.

After this despairingly inadequate intro, the book moves rather abruptly
into the recipes, which bear Sanskritic or alien names in the text (Rajamasha
is Rajma, Suparna is cabbage leaf).

The recipes are accompanied by small cultural histories - Shaak, leafy
greens - comes from Shakambhaare, the goddess of plants. The sanskrit
name for bitter-gourd, Karvellaka, means "that which adorns a vine".  Each
menu is introduced briefly, these are a little better, but again, they are
lightweight and lack depth; one wonders about their accuracy even.
The photographs by Dheeraj Paul are good - better than the average photo
cookbook perhaps.

However, if you need more substantiated historical information on Indian
food, with detailed links to Indus valley artifacts, and texts ranging
from Charaka Samhita to Fa Hsien, Al Beruni, and Ain-i-Akbari, read
Achaya, even his small easily available The story of our food.