Ushri Guruji's love for cooking started at the age of 10. She lived in Kolkata then. Her inspiration was chef Sanjeev Kapoor's show Khana Khazana. She moved to Mumbai, married into a Bohri family, and has been in the corporate world for 17 years.Her love for feeding people inspired her to start her home chef business, Ushri HomeChef, 4 years back d…

She was referred to as the 'salad queen' before salads became a thing.She hosted a food and travel show before they food and travel shows became a thinfg.She came up with a farmer's market before farmers became a thing.Watch Karen Anand in this episode of #foodocracyforher to find out what drives this force of nature.…

Makhanas are trending in the Indian dietary world these days but do you know what they are? How they are grown? How they are processed? If not, then this podcast episode featuring Pratibha Bondia Kheria of Pearl Mithila Makhana...and organic and ethically driven enterprise...will give you the answers that you are looking for. Along with the inspiri…

Reshma and Annu are two sisters who grew up in a small town near Kochi in Kerala. Reshma went to Mumbai for her studies and to work. Annu went to Chennai to study and now works out of Bangalore. The two sisters are part of India's tech boom, having worked in the intersection of bio-tech and radiology and in AI. The lockdown and going back home and …

Annie Bafna is a CA as many of her fellow Parsis are. What makes her rare in the community is that she is a vegetarian! She used to eat eggs once but has given that up apart from when she needs to do tastings at The Nutcracker Mumbai which has an egg-etarian menu. Like any good Parsi, Annie reveres eggs. This ensures that the scrambled eggs coming …

Nandini Deb grew up in Sovabazar, Kolkata, in a family obsessed with food. And music. Sounds like the average Bengali family? Well her family ran a restaurant and her grandmother was the first thumri singer in Kolkata. Nandini left Kolkata for Mumbai as she wanted to be a background singer. She has done many stage gigs across the country and the wo…

My interview with chef Kartikeya Ratan is by far the longest Foodocracy For Her podcast interview that I have done till date. When you listen to the story of a child from a doctor's family who wanted to be a chef and subsequently went to India's top hospitality school, worked in one of the top hotel kitchens in India and then one of the most invent…

Misbah Mitha has run a successful business as a fashion designer for 33 years. The pandemic was the first time where she sat with no work. A friend and neighbour, who was well aware of her cooking skills, bumped into her during his walk one evening. He suggested that she become a home chef as that was the need of the hour. Her husband, a retired ba…

Keertida Phadke is a Pune girl who spent the formative years of her life in Tokyo before she moved to Pune with her parents. She went to Paris to study business management, joined L'Oreal and came back to India with them. This time to Mumbai. Her love for food made her quit and move to NYC to study to be a chef at the Natural Gourmet Institute. To …

The world of Indian food became poorer on the 21st of July 2022 with the passing away of Pia Promina Dasgupta Barve in Mumbai. There was a spontaneous outpouring of grief from the many lives she had touched. To know about the multifaceted life she led, do read this article by food researcher Pritha Sen...https://tinyurl.com/4eeevr7t Many call Pia t…

Mumbai born Shital Kakad of Shital's Food Cottage loved food ever since she was a child. This soon translated into a love for feeding. Her initial enthusiasm was around what one could call 'world cuisine'...pizza, pasta, cakes... turning any dish that her husband liked during their travels into a vegetarian one once back home, was her super power. …

Her home town of Mumbai was like a new city for her when chef Sanjana Patel moved back to India from France and opened a patisserie here. This was 9 years back when the city had just begun to wake up to modern patisserie trends. She opened La Folie in Fort from where she did largely chocolate based confectionery. It was with her outlet in Bandra, L…

The inaugural episode of #foodocracyforher features Pinky Chandan Dixit of Soam. She tells the story behind her setting up the restaurant which keeps winning hearts with its soulful Gujarati vegetarian food and how she tackled the pandemic months. This episode aired on 21st May 2020 as an Instagram live and Pinky and Soam have gone from strength to…

#foodocracyforher is back after a break and we have got a most wonderful episode for you. Y You will get to hear Devika Kotihaskar Khadapkar talk about Kokan Bazar which turned 14 on 9th July 2022. Kokan Bazar was founded by her mother in law, Nayan Khadapkar, who is an alumni of TISS and has been involved in social work through her career. Her aim…

Chef Sachiko Seth, who is of Tibetan origin, was born in Kalimpong in the hills of Bengal. Her mother Doma Wang (pronounced Wong) had started a home chef enterprise in Kolkata back then. Making momos at home and selling them across Salt Lake. Sachiko, whose pet name is Puchu, remembers waking up as a 4 year old to the sight of her mum and her team …

There was once a little girl in Mumbai who would go to school every day and fret over the three R's ... reading, writing and 'rithmetic. She was dyslexic and these shibboleths of the conventional education system just didn't talk to her. She would come home feeling frustrated, sit in the kitchen and see her mother (a Gujarati) and paternal grand-mo…

Once upon a time, there was a Marwari girl from Kolkata who grew up in a family with no food restrictions. She went to Singapore to study film making after her school finals. Cooked for her friends there. Realised that she enjoyed cooking more than she enjoyed making films. Still in her teens, she went off on a journey of self discovery by attendin…

Prachi Agarwal Goel is the head chef and co-founder of Brownie Cottage, established in 2005. In the first episode of the podcast she spoke about how her summer holiday trips to Mumbai from Allahabad as a child got her interested in the world of baking. Of how she did a bakery course at the Sophia Polytechnic after her graduation at Allahabad as the…

Prachi Agarwal Goel is the head chef and co-founder of Brownie Cottage, established in 2005. Setting up a food business was never the life plan of this academic topper from Allahabad who grew up in a conservative Marwari joint family. It was her love for baking and her future husband and co-founder of Brownie Cottage, Raghav Goel's, massive sweet t…

"We didn't talk about food. I read up on my notes on the food bits for you,' exclaimed the indomitable Bachi Karkaria at the end of my interview of her on her latest book, Capture The Dream. Her biography of the late Captain C.P. Krishnan Nair, the founder of the Leela Group. Truth be told, this very readable book left me with so much food for thou…

The story of a cat called Maharani. An outside cat. Who became an inside outside cat. And now is an inside cat named Baby Loaf, lying beside me on the bed while I type this. Things might change the moment the bell rings though as he would make a dash to run out of our apartment which has been his too for more than 2 years now. I do hope you liked t…

The story of a cat named Mau and of how he brought a bunch of us together through his search for his forever home. While I am yet to meet him in person, Mao is special as he is the first kitten whom I helped find a house for. After opening our own home to two. All the people mentioned in the podcasts have themselves adopted community cats and feed …

In this episode on my podcast on the cats in my life, which will hopefully someday become a book, I tell you the story of a cat whom I named Maharani who met me in our building lobby and made me fall in love with cats. I narrated the episode while our cats Baby Loaf and little Nimki sat by me on the bed before they went off to sleep. Was it really …

Hi, my name is Kalyan Karmakar. I am a food writer based in Mumbai. This is the first episode of my new podcast, ‘The tails of my life.’ A title given by my wife for a book she thinks I should write. No, it’s not about food. It’s about the cats in my life. Someone who disliked cats till November 2019 and whose word now centres around them. Do tune …

Pre recording.K: What should we talk of today?K: Let's talk about eggs. I had some lovely eggs for breakfast.K: So did I. You do realise that by this logic we will do a podcast on eggs every week?!K: What a lovely idea!In this episode Kurush and Kalyan speak about poached eggs and French toasts and of how Bengalis revolutionaries have 'redefined th…

#foodocracyforher is where I speak to women doing amazing work in the world of food. My next guest, Shormistha Mukherjee, is not in the food business. Yet. Not directly at least. Though as the co-owner of the digital agency Flying Cursor, this former legacy advertising professional has worked with clients in the food space and with creators too. Sh…

Megha Phull was born in Bhillai, grew up in Delhi and lived in various cities ranging from Glasgow to Mumbai before moving to Singapore last year. She worked in the fashion industry after completing her higher studies in the field. She took a break when her son was born 12 years back, conscious of the fact that she would like to resume her career o…

Find purpose and work will follow, they say. Dr Tatyana Dias, whom I interviewed for the latest episode of the #foodocracyforher podcast, is a great example of this. Her sister, Veruschka, was born when Tatyana was 4. 4 years later the doctors diagnosed Veruschka as being autistic. From then on the lives of young Tatyana and her parents revolved ar…

I am thrilled to present Trishla Lunawat of Meal On Leaf in the latest episode of #FoodocracyForHer. Trishla is a Marwari who was born in Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu. She was exposed to the food of different states of south India while growing up in Coimbatore, with her father turning out to be her cooking guru. Trishla then moved to Mumbai, where she…

In this episode of their podcast, Kurush and Kalyan talk about the concept of barter and its relevance when it comes to social media marketing, they skirt away from the four letter B word in the world of Indian food which can be contentious on social media and move on to biryani, a topic that often leads to serious debates between the two of them. …

In this episode of their podcast, Kurush and Kalyan reminisce about the street food culture of Bombay and Calcutta (as the cities were then known) of their childhood and youth. From Kurush you will hear memories of the samosa-wala outside St Xavier's School, his first vada pav (which he remembers far more vividly than his first crush) and the secre…

I am thrilled to drop the first #foodocracyforher episode of 2022 which features Tanvi Shah from Mumbai. She is an economics student who then studied MIS. She was always interested in cooking, but did not get a chance to do so till she went abroad to study. She came back, got married, ran a handicrafts enterprise. Life was on cruise mode till one d…

I sacrificed my afternoon nap to drop the historic pilot episode of the podcast that will change your life forever: 'K&K Dig Food,' and you have not heard it yet. Seriously? I mean, come on.... please listen to it. Pretty please. We need motivation to make the next episode! (KK) In this episode, Dr Kurush Dalal and (son of a doctor) Kalyan Karmakar…

I am proud to present Investment banker turned independent chef entrepreneur, chef Hemal Shah in the latest episode of #FoodocracyForHer. Hemal is a Mumbai girl, whose father is an oncologist and mother a gynaecologist. It was a given that she would be a doctor and she passed her pre-med and got into one of Mumbai's top medical colleges. She then r…

I am proud to present food blogger turned author, Deeba Rajpal in the latest episode of #FoodocracyForHer AND of my new podcast series #EatingBooks. Deeba was interested in baking from the time she was in school and wryly says that she belongs to an era where dalda featured in baking recipes. Fast forward to a few years later when she was married a…

I am proud to present home chef turned restaurant owner Surekha Walke, of Chaitanya Restaurant and Mother of Malvan, in the latest episode of #FoodocracyForHer. Surekha ji was born in Malvan in coastal Maharashtra. While growing up she was interested in everything but cooking...sports, theatre, politics (in college)..even though she came from a fam…

Folks far more accomplished and adept than me have written about the exemplary work of Professor Abhijeet Banerjee. I won't make any attempts to do so. I know my limits. In 2019 Banerjee was the co- winner of the Nobel Prize for Economics. #nuff said as the kids say these days. What you might not know, is that Abhijit da (this is what I settled on …

I am proud to present home chef Sonali Naik of Divine Flavour in the latest episode of #FoodocracyForHer. Sonali is a Mumbai based interior designer who loves and lives to eat. A conscious eating and exercise based regime helped her lose 40 kilos a couple of years back. "I wanted to feel good and eat clean," she says. Then came the covid pandemic. …

I am proud to present Chef Amninder Sandhu in the latest episode of #FoodocracyForHer. Amninder Sandhu was a science student and a very good one at that. Her father's dream of her becoming a doctor lying at the back of her mind. One day, while playing around with test tubes in the lab, epiphany struck her. It is cooking that she had always loved. W…

I am proud to present Vernika Awal in the latest episode of #FoodocracyForHer. Vernika Awal is a Punjabi who has lived in different parts of India while growing up thanks to her father's 'transferrable job', but never in Punjab. She did her postgraduate studies in media, worked in legacy media (Times of India), then with the site Exchange4Media, be…

I am proud to present Sreedevi Lakshmikutty AKA Devi in the latest episode of #FoodocracyForHer. Devi grew up in in Trivandram and then moved to Mumbai where she and her husband, Ramesh, worked in LIC. They then went to Kentucky where Sridevi decided to do a mid careers masters in Sociology. That is when she awakened to the challenges that the agra…

I am proud to present Sanjukta Dutta nee Das in the latest episode of #FoodocracyForHer. Sanjukta Das is a passionate narrater of the story of Assamese food. She grew up around the tea gardens of Dibrugarh in Assam and then went to Ahmedabad for further studies and later to Mumbai. She and her husband decided to return to Assam after spending a sho…

I am proud to present Pritha Sen in the latest episode of #FoodocracyForHer. Look up any article on the food of Bengal and its history in recent times and chances are that you will find a quote from Pritha Sen in it. She has been called a food historian and anthropologist, though she likes to call herself a food researcher. Her story did not start …

#FoodocracyForHer is series in which I speak to women entrepreneurs and achievers from the world of food to get inspired by them and to share their stories with you. It's fair to call freelance content creators as entrepreneurs too as someone had once pointed out to me. In this episode (recorded in January 2021) I speak to Dr Nandita Iyer @Saffron …

I am proud to present Reshma Mane, the Mumbai based home chef behind 'Every Aroma', in the latest episode of #FoodocracyForHer. Reshma is a Mumbai girl with roots in Kolhapur. She did her MBA after she finished her graduation, the way her parents wanted her to, before following her passion for food. Reshma is a big believer in learning and upskilli…

I am proud to present Sohini Basu @lifeoutsidemrsmagpie who runs Mrs Magpie @mrsmagpiecafe , Kolkata, in this episode of #FoodocracyForHer. Sohini Basu grew up in Kolkata, went to the UK to study fashion and spent the initial years of her career in Kolkata working for Sabyasachi, the famous designer. She then went to Paris to study the business sid…

The latest episode on the #comfortfinelychopped podcast series is on maached mudo diye dal (fish head dal). I spoke about how I cook it and about how Mumbai first felt like home to me the day I first recreated this speciality from my mom’s kitchen in our little kitchen here. In this series I speak about everyday dishes which give me joy. And why th…

I am proud to present Nooresha Kably, who is the chef owner of Izumi Bandra, in this episode of #FoodocracyForHer. Izumi Bandra has taken the Indian restaurant scene by storm within its few years of existence and who better than Nooresha Kably to tell its story. The story of how Nooresha, who earlier ran a sushi delivery outfit with a former chef f…

I am proud to present Tanu Ganguly, Delhi based founder of Mishry Reviews, in the latest episode of #FoodocracyForHer. In this chat you will get to hear Tanu Ganguly speak of her two decade long career in NDTV across its platforms such as NDTV Lifestyle and NDTV food (where she was my editor during the second half of my stint as a columnist with th…

I am proud to present Monika Manchanda, Bangalore based food writer & restaurant consultant and Chief Culinary Officer of LiveAltLife, in the latest episode of #FoodocracyForHer. In this chat you will get to hear about how Monika, a former IT professional, took up food blogging in 2008 and then became a home baker before the phrase was even coined.…