Michelin starred Indian chef Vikas Khanna dons the writer's cap yet again chronicling his culinary journey across the Himalayas in a new book.
Containing a foreword by the Dalai Lama, "Return to the Rivers" is the newest book from the chef set to launch in the US with a limited edition release in India early this year.
Based in the US, Vikas, who won his third Michelin star in October 2013 for Junoon, the Indian fine dining restaurant in New York City has authored 13 books previously.
"If I don't do anything groundbreaking now then when will I do it?," asks the 41-year-old professional cook whose tome amalgamates recipes, photos, and memories of places in the Himalayan region.
Vikas travelled across the Himalayas, seven years back and the book is a collection of his travels, the food that he discovered in his culinary journey, the history, the unique Himalayan culture and his own memories exploring the great Himalayas from Bhutan, Myanmar, Nepal, Tibet, Western China, Pakistan and then Kashmir, Ladakh, Himachal Pradesh in northern India and parts of North East India like Sikkim.
"I could have called this book anything from Vikas Khanna's Himalayan kitchen to Exotic dishes by Vikas Khanna but I was adamant on the name Return to the Rivers, which does not simply gives away that its a cookbook, and it is not, its literature," the chef told PTI in an interview here recently.
He says he has tried to capture the simplicity and hospitality he witnessed in the mountains. The dishes are simple and pure at core like eggplant fritters with ginger, spinach and cheese momos, pressed rice with yogurt and almonds, Tibetan scallion pancakes and Nepalese black lentils with rice.
"It would have been easier for me to write this book today with all the technology and comforts available but it was six years of struggle that goes to make this book authentic and unique," he says.
Vikas has dedicated the 360 page tome to an unknown woman from Tibet. "The dedication is addressed to a woman whose name I don't know. I was traveling in Tibet and misplaced my laptop containing more than half the recipes I had collected during my travels. She stopped the bus in which I was travelling and returned the computer. I offered her some money, but she simply said 'anyone would have done it',".
