Where did it all start: This is a (very) short version.
I grew up in Calcutta, West Bengal, India where in the Bengali tradition (to this day) cooking a feast for the family is the most heartfelt way for family and friends to express love and caring for each other. Having grown up in such an environment where food was such an important part of life I developed early on in life an appreciation for good food. This was particularly because my mother was an exceptional cook that she passed on to her daughters. All of my sisters are exceptional cooks as well.
However, where I grew up in Calcutta, in typical Bengali household, men did not cook. Either you had a cook or your mom or sisters did the cooking. Our household was a typical one. I did not have much of an idea about cooking until I arrived in the US for Graduate School, where I had to learn to cook the basics for mere survival from bad dorm food.
For whatever reason (that I have no explanation for) I took a keen interest in cooking primarily for entertaining friends and family. In the early years in the US, I felt I had a pretty good skill for cooking good food, but nothing exceptional. My cooking skill really took off in the mid 1980’s when all of my sisters came to visit me in California and during their weeks long stay they taught me the finer arts of Bengali style cooking.
In this effort my former wife, Barbara played a significant role in our recipe development since she also learned to be an exceptional cook of Indian cuisine. For a period of 30 plus years that we were married, we took our culinary expertise to a great height.
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