When you are presenting a meal, you are telling a story, says Abhijit Banerjee

Nobel laureate Abhijit Banerjee talked about his new book Chhaunk, which discusses important questions of economics through cooking

“Cooking with pleasure is about imagining food ...” says Nobel laureate Abhijit Banerjee. If one cannot imagine the excitement of eating it, cooking is hard, said the author, who was in conversation with writer Ruth Dsouza Prabhu about his first cookbook Cooking to Save Your Life and his new book Chhaunk at the 13th edition of the Bangalore Literature Festival held on December 15.

Joining them was Cheyenne Olivier, the illustrator for both the books.

No glossy pics

While most cookbooks come with glossy photographs of carefully curated dishes, Ms. Cheyenne spoke on why they decided to break away from that by using illustrations. “With photographs, they don’t leave much scope for interpretation... You know exactly how it’s supposed to look, but most times, we don’t have the same ingredients or the same skills, so you get rather disappointed when it comes out looking something different.”

“The illustrations in these books are little about food and more about people cooking together and eating together. It is also about the place where they eat, which can be outside the kitchen or outside of the dining table.”

Storytelling

For Mr. Banerjee, most of his dishes come with a bit of storytelling. “When you are presenting a meal, you are telling a story. One of the things we tried to do was weave the recipes into stories that are taken from my life. All the essays came with a little bit of memorializing and discussion of social issues.”

On being asked about the challenges of writing a cookbook as opposed to more academic writing, Mr. Banerjee elucidated how food could also be connected to social issues. “What’s nice about food is that it is also connected with a plethora of social issues, whether it is caste, various types of conflicts or migration.” 

While Mr. Banerjee is known for his work in economics, which involves working with elaborate numbers and data, Ms. Cheyenne spoke on how the process of writing these books was a general deviation from it. “I think the point is, it has to speak to someone like me who has no training in economics but also has an interest in economics.”

Measure by the ear

Cooking to Save Your Life is all about practicality even if some of the methods sound outright hideous, for instance, cutting an onion by measuring it with the size of your earlobe. “I don’t think it’s stupid; I think it’s practical. Nobody would know what a quarter of a teaspoon is. We don’t need to pretend like it’s some deep science in every step.” 

On being asked about globalisation and its impact on food where cuisines fall prey to misappropriation, Mr. Banerjee points out how he thinks it’s difficult to claim ownership of any recipe owing to the various historical and social contexts from where they evolve.

Part of social discourse

Mr. Banerjee concludes by talking about his new book, Chhaunk, which discusses important questions of economics through cooking. “With this book, I wanted economics to be a social discourse that we should all be a part of.”

Published - December 15, 2024 10:26 pm IST