A Bite In Time: Cooking with memories

By Michele LeightA “Bite in Time” is a wonderful book by poet, writer and artist Tanya Mendosa that is part memoir, part cookbook, but above all a tribute to her mother, Gilda, who she adored. Her love was returned in full measure and Tanya proudly writes that of her four children she was her parents’ favorite. It was her mother who cooked delicious treats for her, and who ensured that her creative spirit was nurtured.Tanya writes hilariously that she was the dunce in class and did very badly at school, but was simply encouraged by her mother to “read, sing, draw!” (I was blessed with such a mother!)Tanya recited poetry by heart from the youngest age, and was a voracious reader.A perceptive teacher called Mrs. Fonseca noticed that Tanya loved to write essays and encouraged her to write them on any subject that fascinated her. She writes: “I shot to the top of the class and began to win the essay prize every year,” which is how I remember her. We attended the same school, Loreto House, in Calcutta, India, which was run by Irish nuns.Tanya grew up in a warm and loving home perfumed by her mother Gilda’s culinary delights, who kept her doors and kitchen open to all who cared to enter, especially those experiencing some distress or hardship. Gilda’s generosity of spirit infuses every chapter of the book.Gilda also had to keep her husband happy: “My father lived for company and was constantly inviting people over at the drop of a hat, expecting my mother to produce miracles from the little kitchen that we had like the multiplication of the loaves and the fishes.” Gilda came from an aristocratic background but never balked at doing whatever it took to keep her family happy, healthy and above all, well fed.“My mother was brought up in the central Indian town of Nagpur, where her father, Albert da Costa, was a military doctor. The large family with seven children lived in a rambling house called (rather pretentiously I thought when I was older, not to mention inaccurately), Chateau Emilia, after her grandmother.”Tanya’s exquisite prose and poetry (several poems are included in this book) trace the many ways in which her mother was the launching pad for her own creativity, happiness and fulfillment even when it must have been hard for her, because from the very beginning Tanya marched to her own drummer. She did not follow the conventional path of marriage, children and home-making that was the norm in her mother’s generation, and after college she left India to live thousands of miles away on her own in Paris for twenty years, returning for a month during the winter. Her mother’s letters came regularly, often including recipes, worrying she was not eating properly. Sometimes there were packages that enterprising Gilda managed to send from home containing Tanya’s favorite snacks and treats, lest her beloved absent daughter forget her roots!The Paris stories are wonderful, highly amusing because in a city world famous for its food and markets, Tanya did not cook beyond the most basic dishes for herself and the good friends she made. She ate out a lot, and made great friends there, who plied her with marvelous French wine, took her to cafes, restaurants and cooked superb fresh food for her. Some of their recipes are included in the book, including her good friend “Catherine’s Cheese Souffle.”Tanya made a great friend, Lavinia, in Paris, who took her to stay with family in Italy, which made a lasting impression on her. They took a “road trip” to the Ardeche one summer where they rented a cottage on a farm owned by Lucien and his sister Annette, who lived in “the big house, which is described in the most luscious prose:“It was a storybook life our hosts, Lucien and his sister Annette, lived; harvesting their peaches and grapes in season, growing their vegetables and flowers, cherishing their home and each other. They were never in a hurry; their days had the slow rhythm of a country dance. In every matter, each was convinced that the other’s opinion was the best way forward. Most evenings, after dinner, Lucien would invite us to drink a digestif with them. The garden he had created (Annette was happier with the vegetables) had showers of rosebushes ten feet high. Banks old-fashioned hollyhocks, larkspur, love-in-a-mist, lupins and wallflowers were crisscrossed by high hedges of lavender whose scent made the air almost too heavy to breathe. We then happily addled our senses further with Lucien’s potent brews made from rosemary and thyme. In that perfumed darkness, the stars shining above us like so many crystal lamps lit up the faces of that innocent pair as they lifted up their glasses to us yet again, round the garden table, to toast our new friendship.”Tanya’s love of life and adventurous spirit is revealed in chapter after chapter, as is her gift for making great friends and being adored by them. Recipes by some of them are included in the book.Growing up with an adventurous mother probably accounts for her ease in adapting to life in Paris at merely 20 years old, without knowing a soul, without her family. Gilda must have missed her terribly, but wonderful mothers love unconditionally and Tanya was blessed to have one.“For the summer holidays we took long train journeys which were epic. To go from Calcutta to Bombay or Goa took two nights and almost three days in the early 60s. How my mother managed with four children! We carried a huge roll of bedding, bound with leather straps. When it was unrolled, we would dig out sheets, pillows, and coverlets and make up the beds on the berths in the compartment reserved for us. We also carried water flasks and hampers and tiffin carriers of food, as my mother heartily distrusted the food hawked on the railway platforms. Naturally, there were no buffet cars in those days. I remember friends who lived along the route we were taking coming to the stations to greet us, all carrying parcels of fruit, sweets and cold drinks. Life had an easier tempo, then, and there was more time to cultivate friendships.”Recipes for two of the staple items of these mobile picnics, cutlets and potato chops, are included in the book. I lust after potato chops and will do my best to make them in my tiny New York kitchen, but I know they will never taste as divine as they did in India. Or is it that all things experienced in childhood seem so much better?Tanya’s terrific sense of humor is ever present and caused me to laugh so loud so many times I lost count. Here is her description of the cake man or “cakewallah” who sold Gilda his cakes in Tanya’s first Calcutta home:“The cakewallah would visit the house regularly with his enamel trunk that opened up on hinges into trays on which an array of small, square cakes with violently colorful icing were laid out. Of course Michael and I were intoxicated by the sight and the sweet smells that rose from these tiers of offerings. I am sure they were most unhygienic and maybe it was at this time that my mother started to bake. For years she had a circular oven with glass windows set in the top that was perched in the passageway out of which little miracles started to emerge. One of my favorite snack sweets in India is chikki. The basic variety is peanuts stirred into caramelized sugar syrup, poured into greased tins, left to harden, cut into squares and sold cheaply. Naturally there were flies everywhere…..My mother invented a healthier version made with oats, dried fruit, a variety of nuts, honey and sugar, which was just as crisp…..When I moved to the hills years later, I began to yearn for this delicacy. I trawled the internet and finally found the easiest and most accessible version of this treat, which to my astonishment, was called flapjacks, a delicacy I had constantly been reading about in novels set in England.”Most New York supermarkets and gourmet stores sell peanut health bars for all the crazy health nuts that live here but I am sure not even the most expensive will taste like the freshly baked flapjack described in this book. Tanya was beyond lucky to have a mother who made delicious fresh flapjacks for her.The recipes in this book are eclectic and fascinating and include one of my absolute favorite dishes in life, Traditional Fish Curry/Goan Fish Curry with ingredients that take me back to the many welcoming homes and restaurants in India I ate it in, as well as the exotic and marvelously chaotic Indian markets lined with stalls overflowing with spices, fruits, vegetables and a thousand other delectable goodies to entice the palette that I experienced growing up in India and later in life on visits back there.Just some of the ingredients for the fish curry listed in this recipe are: grated coconuts or coconut milk, coriander seeds, cumin seeds, peppercorns, Kashmiri chilis (less hot than regular chilis as this is not a hot dish), fresh ginger and garlic. Small wonder it tastes so fabulous.A more basic recipe, for Macaroni and Cheese, has been noted for trial in my kitchen because both my grandsons would happily eat it every day. America is the land of this delicacy, mostly sold in boxes containing packets with violently colored orange powder that the “cakewallah” would have loved, that is then mixed with milk or water to create the sauce! I never gave such hideous stuff to my son, and am very relieved to find a “packet free” recipe here. Tanya writes that she woke up one morning in her home in the Nilgiri Hills craving her mother’s macaroni cheese “which was creamy and crisp at the same time” and found a recipe on the internet by the “marvelous British chef Olivia Potts, which seemed perfect and is perfect…”In these times dominated by computers and kitchen aids, it is amusing and inspiring to read about a powerhouse wife and mother of four who managed perfectly well without either, worked as a teacher when Tanya went to school, and then at the Polytechnic in Goa when Tanya left for Paris. She also wrote a best-selling book “The Best of Goan Cooking,” the manuscript of which was typed out on the computer by Tanya’s dear cousin Maya, who adored Gilda, because she had neither the interest or ability in doing so!“She had a big launch in Goa for the book, with the Governor’s wife as the chief guest, at the famous old Mandovi hotel in Panjim. This book went into more than a dozen editions over the next fifteen years, which is quite exceptional for a cookbook.”Tanya worked in Paris till the age of 40, still without cooking beyond the most basic dishes, and writes:“All good things must come to an end. Hopefully, they lead to even better ones! After almost 20 years, I wanted, in that order, a cocker spaniel, to start painting and writing again and to have a garden. There was no way I could do that in France, unless I married a rich man, which I balked at. So I decided to leave Paris and go back to India….”By then her parents were living in Goa, and she established herself in Bangalore for a few years, where she opened a lending library, and began to adjust to her new life. She met her companion Antonio E. Acosta, asuperb artist and great cook, and he moved in with her. She still relied on her microwave for most of her cooking, but he was a wizard in the kitchen, so they ate well. I was happy to read that they did then move to Goa, near her mother, for a few happy years before the crowds and development drove them to the beautiful serenity of the Nilgiri Hills, where she still lives. Tanya writes poetry, paints, gardens and cooks delicious food, and wrote her second memoir here, “The Book of Joshua,” about her beloved cocker spaniel. There are also several books on poetry, the love of Tanya’s life.Tanya’s mother continued writing cookbooks: “In her late seventies now, my mother also gradually left more and more of the everyday cooking to her maid Anna, but continued writing her cookbooks. The second last, the largest and thickest one, was commissioned by her publishers after her book ‘The Best of Goan Cooking” had gone into double digit editions. My mother tackled this book, “Party Cooking Around the World” with elan, poaching recipes left, right and center.”Wonderful as the recipes are however, it is Tanya’s exquisite poetry and prose that leave a deep and moving impression, such as this:“It was as if each day had been freshly washed, freshly painted, just like opening a new book and seeing the pictures that transported you into another world, as if on a magic carpet. A child lives every moment, good or bad, as if it’s been newly minted. Yesterday is forgotten: now is forever.”Now it is time to quote some beautiful poetry by Tanya, from “From My Mother’s Dining Tables,” describing Gilda’s life after her husband had died and all her children had gone off to make their own lives, as it must be for all of us with children:“It has become her language now, the spices, the sugar.The talk is less, as are the numbers.As is the size of her last table, where she sits for the most part alone.But in our minds it remained the same size,Bearing the same permanent banquet, each time we returned.Like a tigress gathering her cubs from the shadows of darkness,She still purrs, and cuffs, and feeds.Like an origami flower, she expands in the water of our need…”The last page of the book includes a beautiful poem dedicated to her mother, “For Gilda (1929-2010)” that must be read in its entirety in the book, so I will not quote from it here.In the final paragraph Tanya writes:“I wrote this poem late one night in Paris, a good twenty years before my mother left us, when I was thinking of her and all that she meant to me. I later thought how important it is to tell people you love just that – that you love them, when they are still there and able to appreciate it.”Unconditional love is the greatest gift of all, and the hardest to give. All who receive such love are the luckiest people on earth. Both Tanya and I had mothers that gave and gave, to the fullest, and this in a nutshell is what “A Bite In Time” is about.There are photographs in the book of the author and her family, including one of the cover of her mother’s bestselling cookbook, “The Best of Goan Cooking,” that went into eleven editions! The last photograph is of herself with her parents and siblings in those magical days of youth. What an elegant family, with a beautiful young Gilda staring serenely into space. You would never know from that image the hectic and demanding life she led.Thank you Tanya and Gilda for the Traditional Fish Curry recipe, inspiring my culinary fantasies, and for the joyride this book has been.I look forward to reading Tanya’s other memoir, “The Book of Joshua.” My beloved mother was besotted with her dogs throughout her life, and had two in her bed as she settled down for the day, no matter how much my father protested! If she had to choose, she told him firmly, it was he who would have to find somewhere else to sleep!I also look forward to seeing Tanya and our other classmates again some day soon when I return to India. Our last meeting was at a wonderful reunion in 2011 at Loreto House that included an unforgettable weekend at the country home of one of them, about two hours outside Calcutta, nestled in the luscious Bengal countryside. What fun we had! Many of them meet regularly, but for those of us who cannot, we all manage to connect via Whattsapp! Like Gilda, computers, phones and I have never been friends, but in this case I am deeply grateful for them! I feel so fortunate to still be in touch with such an awesome group of women. It was when I joined this group – thanks to my life-long friend Rommy who I became instant friends with at Loreto House at the tender age of seven – that I learned about “A Bite In Time” by Tanya.Like Tanya, throughout my life I have been blessed with the most wonderful family and friends, including my childhood classmates from India.I can’t wait to read “The Book of Joshua.”Both books are available in the United States at www.amazon.com

What a fabulous book! Always a treat to read Tanya Mendonsa's work, whether it is her poetry or autobiographies. She has such an ease with language and makes us want to follow her wherever she takes us. This book brings us back into time, as the title suggests, into the kitchen of her mother who was an extraordinary cook and transmitted an abundance of love to her family through this art. In this book, Tanya Mendonsa has included some of her mother's famed Goan recipes as well as others that she picked up in her travels and her life of many years living in Paris. Such a wonderful book. I highly recommend it.

A Bite in Time is party a memoir and partly a recipe book. The book is a love letter to the author’s mother Gilda Mendosa and her cook book – The Best of Goan Cooking. As you flick through these colorful pages and poetic verses, the unique recipes navigate you through the streets of India, Italy and France intermingling Indian, Portuguese and Arabian cuisines catering from slow breakfasts to quick suppers. Reading through the recipes, you also get to know the emotion behind every dish and the memory it held in the author’s family.The author has this warmth and simplicity in her narrative style that the reading process itself is enjoyable. After one point, its not just about the food but the cultural influences, traditions carried for generations as legacy in the form of food and more. The dishes are doable and rather time tested which is evident from the stories. I’d recommend this to anyone looking forward for some culinary inspiration in their life.

"A Bite in Time" by Tanya Mendonsa is a delicious memoir that celebrates the unique blend of Indian, Portuguese, and Arabian cuisines found in Goan cooking and takes you on a culinary journey.Inspired by her mother's best-loved cookbook, "The Best of Goan Cooking," Tanya Mendonsa shares her memories of her mother's cuisine and the delicious food she has tasted over the years. It's a must-read for anyone in search of culinary inspiration or a good memoir.Mendonsa's writing transports you to different parts of the world, evoking the tastes, smells, and emotions of each place. The book is a combination of recipes and memoir, making it a delightful read for both foodies and those who love a good story.As a poet and painter, Mendonsa's writing is beautifully lyrical and her descriptions of the food are so vivid that you can almost taste them and it also brings the food and people in her stories to life. Her stories of the tables she has eaten at in different parts of the world are both entertaining and inspiring.Overall, "A Bite in Time" is a heartfelt tribute to the power of food to bring people together and evoke memories of a life well-lived. Whether you're a fan of Goan cuisine or simply enjoy a good food memoir, this book is sure to leave you feeling both satisfied and inspired.

Next to breath, food is our constant companion. Food and family too are almost inseparable. Aromas of food reaching back into our childhood and youth continue to evoke memories of lives lived and people who we enjoyed it with!Tanya Mendonsa seems to have an uncanny understanding of these delicate connections. She has, as her bio tells us, written 6 books already, of which this is her 2nd memoir. With " A Bite In Time ", she weaves her storytelling web, masterfully combining disparate strands - of recipes remembered from her days of cooking with her mother (a prolific cook and writer in her own right); her nearly a quarter century of life spent in Paris and her subtle yet unique experimentation with everyday ingredients to create unforgettable delicacies. She is primarily a poet, so please don’t even get me started on her easy over way with words laying threads over silken threads, taking the reader on a journey full of aromas, tastes and textures.Her varied and colourful stories of her life in India and in Europe are interwoven with family photos and gems of her own poems as well as over 70 recipes : her mother's, her own, and her friends. The book " A Bite in Time " is larger than the normal format, and the graphics and illustrations are dazzling and original.This book is, above all, something that everyone can relate to - a daughter's tribute to a beloved mother, reaching out across time and boundaries to unite the reader in a shared experience of love and the pleasures of the table and of life.

I recently read "A Bite in Time" by Tanya Mendonsa and I was completely captivated by the author's personal journey through food. This memoir is a beautifully written exploration of the author's relationship with food, from her childhood memories to her present-day experiences as a food writer.One of the things I loved about this book was the way Tanya Mendonsa writes about food. Her descriptions of flavors, textures, and aromas are so vivid and evocative that I could almost taste the food myself. The author's passion for food is evident in every page, and it's hard not to get caught up in her enthusiasm.The author takes us on a journey through her life, sharing her personal stories and experiences with food, each chapter is dedicated to a specific era and culture. The author has done an excellent job of weaving her personal stories with the history of food and its cultural significance. I felt like I was traveling with her and learning something new with every chapter.I particularly enjoyed the author's reflections on her family and their role in shaping her love of food. Her relationship with her mother was particularly moving and inspiring. The author's storytelling is so compelling that I felt like I was sitting across from her and listening to her stories.Overall, "A Bite in Time" is a beautifully written and engaging food memoir that I would highly recommend to anyone who loves food, cooking, or travel. The author's storytelling and culinary knowledge make for a captivating read. It's not only a book about food but also a book about life and the memories that food can evoke. Tanya Mendonsa has done an excellent job of capturing the essence of food and its ability to connect us to our past and present.