"In Eating India, award-winning food writer Chitrita Banerji takes readers on an odyssey through a national cuisine formed by generations of arrivals, assimilations, and conquests. With each wave of newcomers - ancient Aryan tribes, Persians, Middle Eastern Jews, Mongols, Arabs, Europeans - have come new innovations in cooking, and new ways to apply India's rich native spices, poppy seeds, saffron, and mustard to the vegetables, milks, grains, legumes, and fishes that are staples of the Indian kitchen."