Nina Mukerjee Furstenau is the author of Biting through the Skin: An Indian Kitchen in America's Heartland, and Savor Missouri: River Hill Country Food and Wine. She teaches food and wine writing at the University of Missouri's Science and Agriculture Journalism Program and Journalism School. She is based in Fayette, Missouri.
Q: How did
food become the way to explore and maintain a connection to India as you were
growing up in Kansas?
A: It was
interesting to be of two cultures while growing up. Outside our front door, I
was a Kansas girl, experiencing girlhood like all my friends: riding my bike,
eating ice cream sandwiches, roller skating and playing softball.
But
Pittsburg, Kansas, with its own rich story of assimilation had no particular
interest in differences. So it was behind our front door that India surfaced,
especially around the dinner table. The foods my mother prepared, the spices
she used and how she used them all spoke of a culture that I craved to know. So
I paid attention and learned from her, and from my father.
During cool,
wet days, he would feel the need for a Bengali comfort food, kichuri, a dish of
lentils and rice, typically made in the wet months of monsoon when the rivers
of Bengal would be swollen. In my childhood, I didn’t think of kichuri as a
clue to my heritage, just that it was warm and rich and tasty. But, now it, and
other dishes my mother created in the flatlands of Kansas, turns out to be the
part of Indian culture I carry with me.
Q: Did you
need to do research to recreate some of your experiences, or did you remember
most of it without any research?
A: I think memory
unfolds as you begin to focus on what makes you who you are—Biting Though the
Skin started with the realization that I took the same four or five basic
Indian recipes with me to the Peace Corps in 1984 that my mother wrote frantic
letters to my grandmother for in 1960 when she left her Indian home for
Thailand as a new bride.
After that
initial memory surfaced, I talked with my mother about her experiences of leaving
home and about how our two totally different childhoods could produce the same
set of recipe cards. The best part of writing this book for me was the
discussions I had with my family as memories surfaced.
Q: How did you pick the recipes to include in the book?
A: I chose
recipes that were part of the narrative scene. As with most books, I was
looking for what moved the story forward, what scenes revealed the theme I was
trying to convey. The foods that were a part of that movement were chosen to be
part of the fifty-six family recipes included.
Q: You also
have another book out this year, Savor Missouri. How did this book
come about?
A: I feel
food has story and regional food can reveal a lot about particular soils,
settlement, and culture of an area. I teach food writing in the Science and
Agricultural Journalism program at MU and in the course of my work, I came
across so many interesting people raising foods and making wines and producing
cheeses and sausages that reflected the settlement of our region.
I find it
fascinating how those food choices reflect the settlement of people from far away
cultures that somehow made their food story come alive again in a new place.
The pieces of their original food story that made the transition were the ones
that fit the landscape, the soils and weather of this place.
I was drawn
to writing about this, even though I am not from an agricultural family,
because of how it seems to mirror my own family’s connection to the fruit of
their homeland and what we tried to recreate in our Kansas kitchen.
Q: What are
you working on now?
A: I am
writing a novel at the moment that incorporates two cultures—Missouri and
Africa. Since it’s early days on that project, I can’t say yet how large a role
food story will play, but you can be sure some of that interest will show.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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