The idea of developing this site came after my daughters, Kavita and Neeta, left home and asked me to supply them with recipes for their favourite dishes. They missed the food they had grown up with and wanted me to write everything down for them. In the beginning, I started writing the recipes on a card system, copying each recipe for each of them. This was very labour intensive and never got finished.
Time passed. By now some of my nephews and nieces had grown up and left home too. They were all in the same dilemma, how to make food like their mum's? By now computers had become household things. Everyone was linked to email and had access to web sites. I was approaching retirement and would have more time to do other things. The time was right to restart collecting and organising recipes into a family cook book. Instead of creating a book which would have to printed and posted to each person I decided to locate the recipes on a web site which could be accessed by friends, family and others around the world looking for authentic recipes.
I wrote down as many of my own recipes as I could. The next step was to write to all my nephews, nieces, sisters and brothers and friends, to ask them to send their favourite recipes. The idea began to gain momentum. Some were very enthusiastic and replied immediately. Others had to be nagged a little and their best recipes were dragged out of them. Each recipe has the contributor's name clearly marked.
The initial site was kindly designed by my nephew, Anupam, with my brother, Ashok, editing recipes for publication. It was a great site but difficult to develop because of my limited knowledge of computers and the difficulty in adding new recipes directly onto it. The next step was for Ashok to create another site for me. He worked very hard in editing, correcting and putting quite a few recipes on this new site. However, the problem of my being able to work on it directly remained. Now the site has been completely redesigned (designed by my daughter, Kavita and created by my son-in-law, Pete) to allow family and friends to easily read and print recipes. I simply have to click to be able to work on the site directly.
I hope you all get something out of it and put something back in the form of your comments, ideas, new recipes. Every dish is tried and tested by the author. Bear in mind that one can never duplicate a recipe exactly. Oven temperatures vary, quality of ingredients vary and we all take, and should take, some creative licence, making our own adjustments. This is what cooking is all about. This is intended to be a 'living' cook-book, which will change and improve constantly. I wish all of you visitors to this site as much pleasure as I have had in writing and collating it.
This website is dedicated to my mother Yashoda, who always encouraged us to cook, and to my father Suresh Chandra, who always helped her in the kitchen.
Mamta Gupta
May 2001