I really enjoyed this book - I loved the stories and science behind the recipes. I can't wait to utilize it more when it is chili season!

This book is beautifully written if a bit over-detailed. Tales of childhood, the importance of food and tradition, interspersed with recipes to bring you home.

This was my first book about food history (a topic i'm really passionate about) and I can't stress this enough when I say this was a great start. I'll definetely look for more books like this and I'll be waiting for new stuff by Nina Mukerjee Furstenau.

I was gifted an e-ARC copy of this book to review in exchange for my honest opinions. For this, I would like to thank the author and the publisher.

"Green Chili and Other Imposters" is, in its essence, a family story - Furstenau acknowledges as such in the very first pages of the introduction. She longs to understand the cuisine of her culture and family in a much deeper way. Her travels to find the thread of her cuisine lead her in turn to every corner of the world; from Peru to Mongolia, and from the United States to China. This leads to the questions that are tantamount to the research that Furstenau has done: who owns cuisine? Who can tell its story? What does an ingredient have to do to "belong?"

I thoroughly enjoyed this journey through the history of the world to trace ingredients that one may think are synonymous with Indian food, but who have only become essentials in relatively recent history. Crops such as potatoes, tomatoes, and yes, the titular green chili have come from all over the world as a result of trade and migration. These have inserted themselves into Indian cuisine so firmly that Westerners can no longer think of Indian food without them. But those who practice traditional Indian cooking from centuries ago know when and how the ingredients came to the subcontinent.

Following Furstenau along the trail of these discoveries was a delight. Her writing is personal while still conveying the academic importance of the subject. Personal anecdotes and sensory details put you in the streets of Kolkata with her. I particularly enjoyed learning about the histories of minorities - Jews, Armenians, and Chinese among them - in India, and the ways that they have helped shape the food culture of the country overall.

A few things I felt could have been done better. Furstenau uses in-text citations in a conversational manner rather than footnotes. While this does make it feel more personal than academic, the lengthy titles of some books and articles caused the sentences to feel clunky and interrupted my flow of reading. I also felt that they made her sound like more of a reporter than an official who can be quoted in her own right. All academic writing is reporting with our own conclusions added in; however, footnotes I believe would have helped this book seem more like a source to be quoted rather than a collection of other sources, while helping ease the flow of the words.

I also felt that some of the chapters could have had a tighter focus. It took me by surprise when I was reading about tea and then suddenly chili chicken. The thread that binds them is, of course, Chinese migration in India but I would have liked them to be their own separate chapters. That, or that the chapter was more explicitly about broad Chinese influences and then married the stories of tea and chili chicken together more seamlessly.

Overall, this book completely opened my curiosity into the history of Indian food, and of foodways in general. Furstenau's passion and knowledge of the subject comes through really well. I recommend this to anyone who is pursuing knowledge on these topics. With a few structure tweaks, this would easily be a 5 star read. I look forward to doing my own further research on some of the topics mentioned within!

*This book was received as an Advanced Reviewer's Copy from NetGalley.

This book turned out to be more than I could imagine. I read the description, and knew that it traced ingredients and their history through Indian cuisine. Origins, uses, arguments over provenance; it was surprising to learn about chilis, rice, and many other ingredients and how they were incorporated into Indian food, and when. I guess the one I had always taken for granted and not thought about origin was the chili (so the title is apt on this one to call it out); I'll let the book give you its history, but I really would have expected a longer one.

Which just tells me how much I still have to learn and that this book was definitely a lot of new information that I gobbled right down. I was also extremely pleased that it included recipes, and plan to try a few. Sourcing some ingredients may be difficult, but we have some wonderful stores nearby that hopefully I can. But even more surprising, was the relationship between these ingredients, and the stories told by the author of her childhood and experience with the ingredients and dishes. And how she came to be on this food tour of India. I was engrossed in her stories and instead of it detracting from the book (which often times personal anecdotes can do), it instead added quite a bit and made the book more relatable. My only real complaint was that the last few chapters seemed to rush, and I was so immersed that I would have loved the detail the first few had.

If you enjoy reading about food history (and don't mind a few good recipes), this is a book to check out!

Review by M. Reynard 2021

This book is even better than expected. The title didn't provide enough insight into how great this book would be. Very enjoyable story of an American of Indian parentage who grew up in the Midwest. The author shares her journey as a Fulbright-Nehru Global Scholar examining the foods of the Kolkata, Bengal, India. She weaves in some of her life story of childhood trips there and growing up as a minority in her Midwest town. Her writing style is very engaging. She then provides a series of recipes mixed with information (including historical information) about the ingredients in the recipes. She also provides tips for the recipes from her own experiences cooking. She even covers the Ayurvedic perspectives. Highly recommend for foodies and all people who enjoy Indian food.

This book delighted me in many ways. It is not a cookbook, but it has intriguing recipes. It is not a textbook, but it traces history and food origins with tantalizing stories. It is not a travelogue, but it describes both Kansas and India. It is not a memoir, but the author's life is a huge part of this book. Put it all together and you have all the ingredients for a fascinating read about the foods of India.

I am not a particular fan of Indian food, but I still enjoyed reading this book and it made me more interested in trying different types of Indian food. I particularly enjoyed knowing of the rich and varied dishes of India. The writing is lovely and it reads smoothly. It should appeal to a wide range of readers.

Thank you to NetGalley for an advance copy of this book.

Green chilies are used in dozens of types of cuisine, and most people love them. Nina Mukerjee Furstenau has included them in her cookbook Green Chili and Other Impostors. Most of the recipes have Indian nuances, and there are well-known recipes for curries and sauces that are mainstream Indian. Other recipes will most likely be new to cooks who are not familiar with Indian food. This cookbook does not include recipes for includes mostly Indian recipes, and many are tempting. They are written in standard form, so they are easy to follow. However, many are very involved and time consuming, so they aren’t for those cooks who want to get dinner on the table in a short period of time.

Making the recipes in the book are much easier if the cook has made a trip to an Indian or Asian grocery store, since many of the ingredients are not well known, and not available at regular grocery stores. The book includes recipes for all kinds of great things that can be made with green chilies, including appetizers, mains, vegetarian, soups and stews, and desserts. The main drawback is that there is not even one photograph. With dishes that aren’t familiar to mainstream cooks, this is significant. In this modern age when photographs are very easy to include, there is no excuse for leaving them out.

The prose in the book at the beginning of each chapter is interesting and gives insight to chilies, history of chilies, and insight into some of the dishes. Some of the writing is clever, and this is one that is interesting enough to curl up and just read for the learning value. This cookbook is one for those who like a bit of heat in their food and don’t mind not knowing what the finished dishes should look like.

Special thanks to NetGalley for supplying a review copy of this book.