"A smell can carry a memory, and certain foods can compress the memory of an entire childhood into them." So writes Shoba Narayan in her new book, "Monsoon Diary: A Memoir with Recipes." Narayan, a food writer for the New York Times, has compressed the smells, the sounds, and the brilliant shades of roasted Indian spices into a lyrical, and often hilarious, tale about growing up in South India.
Narayan's coming-of-age story paints a richly textured picture of cuisine as culture, of good food and the memories tied to it, and of the ways that food helps us better understand ourselves and those we love.
