Ramin Ganeshram: Cooking Together Creates Bonds

Long before foodie culture blew up into a popular phenomenon with celebrity chefs, high-profile competitions, and its own network, Ramin Ganeshram, whose novel Stir It Up! is released on August 1, understood the power of cooking.

“The way to get my dad to talk was to be in the kitchen with him,” Ganeshram told Patch. “Cooking and food are vehicles for storytelling. They create opportunities for conversations, relationships, and memories. ”

Released by Scholastic Press and targeted to children ages 10-14, the novel follows thirteen-year old Anjali Krishnan as she pursues her passion for cooking. While helping her Trinidadian-born father and grandmother at their family’s Richmond Hill, Queens roti restaurant, Anjali dreams of becoming the youngest Food Network star ever.

When an opportunity to audition for a teen chef show conflicts with her Stuyvesant High School entrance exam, Anjali must decide whether to pursue her own dreams or her parents’ dreams for her. And she will have to learn how to fight for her vision of her future.

The book includes over a dozen of the recipes that figure into the story. Understanding first-hand the bonding power of cooking together, Ganeshram, whose father emigrated from Trinidad in 1953, intends for parents and children to cook them together.

“I had to fight really hard for some of these recipes,” she said of her editors’ concerns that some of the recipes might be too difficult for children. “If children could follow these recipes on their own, then the opportunity to bring parent and child together is lost.”

Ganeshram also resisted the suggestion that some of the recipes be Americanized over concerns that some of the ingredients would be difficult to find.

“The culture of exploration, of trying to find the ingredients, is part of the activity,” she noted. “Norwalk Stop and Shop has a whole West Indian isle.”

Though Ganeshram never lived in the Richmond Hill, Queens neighborhood in which the novel is set, she covered it for eight years while reporting for the New York Times. At the time, the neighborhood’s demographic was changing from what had been a heavily Irish and Italian population to Indo-Caribbean immigrants, including Trinidadians.

“It was a blessing I was assigned to this neighborhood,” Ganeshram said, because it provided her with the kind of cultural immersion she had not previously experienced.

Ganeshram first began writing about food as a hobby over 15 years ago, when it was something ‘for the ladies,’ she recalled. Then the subject exploded into a phenomenon, and it happened that Ganeshram had been writing about food all along. After 9/11 renewed her awareness of the fragility of life, Ganeshram decided to further pursue her cooking passion by attending culinary school.

“I wanted to be more legitimate as a food writer,” she said. “People were either chefs writing about food or journalists writing about food but not both.”

She attended the Institute of Culinary Education, the same school where her protagonist takes recreational cooking classes, and began turning down all assignments except food-related ones. She also produced a cookbook about Trinidadian food, Sweet Hands: Island Cooking from Trinidad and Tobago.

“Every food and recipe has a story,” Ganeshram believes, and they can be a catalyst for us to understand each other.

Ganeshram is also on the board of Meriden-based nonprofit My City Kitchen, founded by Trinidad native Kashia Cave. The organization—whose mission is to teach kids to eat healthy, build their self-esteem, and develop basic life skills—offers cooking classes for children and their parents as well as demonstrations and referrals to nutritional counselors.

Those who donate to My City Kitchen throughout the month of July will be entered in a random drawing for a signed, advanced copy of Stir it Up! Donations are tax deductible and can be made through the website.