Acknowledgments

I am always overwhelmed and humbled by the encouragement and support I get from my family, friends, and colleagues. This book is dedicated to all those people, and it belongs to them as much as it does to me. I enjoyed the process of making The Café Spice Cookbook and I could not have finished it without the significant influence and inspiration of many people. I will always remain thankful for all their ideas, insight, and tips that made my journey complete.

Special hugs to my amma and pappa, who gave me the undying support and the freedom to follow my dreams; to my loving family, which supports and motivates me to realize my passion and love for cooking; and to my life partner and best friend, Sreemoyee Sarkar, for her confidence and support through all the intense moments of pressure in my life.

Special thanks to Sushil and Lata Malhotra as well as Sameer, Payal, and Sandhya Malhotra—my Café Spice family—for being my pillars of support and advisors; and to all the dedicated team members at Café Spice who work hard to make this brand the best of the best. More like a family than merely colleagues, they have always supported and welcomed me with a smile and made my every day special.

A big thank you to all the wonderful and talented people who helped put this cookbook together, including everyone at Tuttle Publishing: Jon Steever and June Chong, my editors, for their stellar advice and support; and Eric Oey, who has always guided my vision for publishing cookbooks. Thanks to Sow Yun and the diligent and creative team that whipped this book into shape.

Huge thanks to the talented photographer and my friend, Jack Turkel, who always makes my vision for the food and settings come alive in his photographs and makes the food look sumptuous. I’d also like to thank Sambrita Basu, a dear friend and a writer who has helped turn my thoughts into reality for the book.

There are many more people—friends and mentors—whom I would like to thank, but a list of all of them would far exceed the limited dimensions of this page. To them I offer big thanks for their continuous support and belief in me.