Authors: Ranjini Rao and Ruchira Ramanujam
Reviewed by: Harsha Prashanth
I have read some books in the genre of History and Historical Fiction. In these books, I have seen how authors can connect history to funny facts or incidents (Horrible History series) and also how history can be connected to animals (The Blue Horse & Other stories). But History and Food? I had never read that sort of a connection!
Are you curious? Come let’s explore this fantastic ‘food-venture’ called ‘History Dishtory’ made by Ranjini Rao and Ruchira Ramanujam and published by Hachette India!
This book doesn’t explore ‘food history’ in a factual manner. The authors introduce two children – Siya and Samar who are given a ‘Wayback pod’ for their birthday. This device creates a 7D simulation of important events in world history. Now each chapter discusses an event in history, but with a story of these two children.
Putting facts and a story together is quite like baking a cake. The factual part is the cake itself, but we keep adding some glaze to prevent it from getting dry. The glaze is the creativity which is added atop the cake or facts to make the story or cake interesting!
The best part is that all the historical food in the recipes are given to us in the form of recipes! This gives an interactive element to the book that allows readers to try them out and make their own food.
I particularly liked ‘The Great Depression Chocolate Cake’. It was made during the Great Depression, when a drought ravaged the United States. It caused all crops to dry up, farmers lost their jobs, factories processing these crops were at a loss. The companies could not sell new products to retailers who were unable to sell their old stock. Common people could not afford to buy rich products, dairy and milk. The Great Depression cake did not therefore consist of ingredients like eggs and milk, they made use of water and oil and what they had. And Voila! A scrumptious cake was born.
This is my try on the Great Depression Chocolate Cake and it was a huge success! I also made another desert called 'Strawberry Oatmeal Cups' which was eaten by Jews in hiding during the Holocaust. When The Nazi Germany kept killing many Jews (about 6 million) Jews were led into hiding, and could not go out often. They had to make use of what they had and preserved food for as long as possible. The book says that Strawberries were a rare treat to Jews and when they got their hands on it, they baked with it and made jam with it. Since I did not have strawberry, I replaced it with mango and also topped it with blueberries. It was nice too!
Like this Chocolate cake, many events across the world created lovely things that are now considered food marvels.
The book is called History Dishtory. The characters represent the history and the dishtory part. Siya, who the book describes as ‘Trivia-crazy’ represents the History part. Samar is the ‘budding chef’ and is the one who cooks and plans all the recipes in each chapter. He represents the Dishtory part.
With a book like this, I was already imagining the Part -2 sequel. Here is my idea:
Siya and Samar are given an end-of-the-year school project. The project is to represent Top-10 iconic historical food from India, they are left wondering. Luckily the Way back Pod comes to the rescue. An all-new adventure begins called – Indian History Dishtory!
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