Biting through the Skin: An Indian Kitchen in America's Heartland

by Nina Mukerjee Furstenau

At once a traveler’s tale, a memoir, and a mouthwatering cookbook, Biting through the Skin offers a first-generation immigrant’s perspective on growing up in America’s heartland. Author Nina Mukerjee Furstenau’s parents brought her from Bengal in northern India to the small town of Pittsburg, Kansas, in 1964, decades before you could find long-grain rice or plain yogurt in American grocery stores. Embracing American culture, the Mukerjee family ate hamburgers and softserve ice cream, took a visiting guru out on the lake in their motorboat, and joined the Shriners. Her parents transferred the cultural, spiritual, and family values they had brought with them to their children only behind the closed doors of their home, through the rituals of cooking, serving, and eating Bengali food and making a proper cup of tea.


As a girl and a young woman, Nina traveled to her ancestral India as well as to college and to Peace Corps service in Tunisia. Through her journeys and her marriage to an American man whose grandparents hailed from Germany and Sweden, she learned that her family was not alone in being a small pocket of culture sheltered from the larger world. Biting through the Skin shows how we maintain our differences as well as how we come together through what and how we cook and eat. In mourning the partial loss of her heritage, the author finds that, ultimately, heritage always finds other ways of coming to meet us. In effect, it can be reduced to a 4 x 6-inch recipe card, something that can fit into a shirt pocket. It’s on just such tiny details of life that belonging rests.


In this book, the author shares her shirt-pocket recipes and a great deal more, inviting readers to join her on her journey toward herself and toward a vital sense of food as culture and the mortar of community.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, Food, India, Cookbooks, Cultural, Cooking

192 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2013

About the author

Nina Mukerjee Furstenau is a journalist, author, and editor of the FoodStory book series for the University of Iowa Press. She was a Fulbright Global research scholar in Kolkata, India, is on the board of directors for Media for Change, and has won the MFK Fisher Book Award, the Grand Prize Award for Culture/Culinary Writing from Les Dames d'Escoffier International, a Kansas Notable Book award, and more.

Her upcoming book, Green Chili & Other Impostors (Nov 2021), will be published as Chilies, Channa & Rasa in India . Other published works include the award-wining Biting Through the Skin: An Indian Kitchen in America's Heartland, Tasty! Mozambique, and Savor Missouri: River Hills Country Food and Wine. Nina's work appears as a contributor in the anthology Pie & Whiskey: Writers Under the Influence of Butter and Booze, as well as in newspapers, magazines, and journals.

Nina served in the U.S. Peace Corps (1984-86), work that informs almost everything she has done since.

Reviews

[Shelby *trains flying monkeys* · Rating 2 out of 5]

This memoir tells Nina's story of growing up in Middle America and being sorta caught in two different places. Her family is from Bengal (northern India) and they practice their heritage but it seems rather hidden. Only when no one is around did they practice any Indian customs. Nina did have some friends over once for some food and that went really well.



The kids were not having any of that. (Calm down-there were no snakes harmed in the making of that meal.)

The food descriptions in this book are amazing. I could almost smell the spices hitting that hot oil. (I LOVE Indian food.)


The problem I had with the book was that the author did not seem to be able to tie it all together in a readable way. Some of her tidbits of writing were so good and then she would start to ramble and my eyes would glaze over.
I do admit that I have six of her recipes marked to make. My not cast iron stomach will let everyone know when I do it.

(gonna be totally worth it)

Booksource: Netgalley in exchange for review

[Dorcas · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was so excited to get approval on NetGalley to read this book! I have a love affair with all things Indian (except their music, can't quite wrap my ears around that) and I saw this book and just hoped against hope that the publisher would say yes to my request. They did! yay!

I'm one of those weird white "foodies" who haunt Asian markets and take home all kinds of exotic vegetables and spices and then hover over youtube clips to learn how to use them. I have a huge plastic tub of Indian spices that barely fits in my cupboard and more stacked behind that.

So as you can imagine, I was fascinated to read the author's story of growing up Indian in Kansas, USA; the only Indian family for hundreds of miles. How did she cope? How did she fit in? How did her mother prepare their beloved foods? And at the end of the day, how did she view herself? American or Bengali?

The author has a wonderful way with words and her stories of visits back to India and food celebrations just made my mouth water. Other descriptions equally fascinated me. Let me give you one example of Indian architecture:

"With time, mold and moss would creep over the pale pinks and butter yellows of the plaster walls until, grayish and mottled, the walls blended the space between the soil and the sky, as if a charcoal artist had just smudged their edges".

Love it!

There is also a poignant tale at the beginning of the book where the author tosses a banana outside a train window to a boy who was watching her eat, cupping his hands, hungry. She reminisced how he caught the banana and immediately devoured it, skin and all. She was only about 6 years old at the time but she never forgot it.

As the book progresses she grows up, the final few chapters she is in the Peace Corp with her husband in Tunisia learning more food culture there. All through the book are recipes which I have bookmarked, eager to try.

So if I loved it so much, why 4 stars?

Pictures! I want pictures!!
That's the long and short of it.
I did, however, enjoy the snapshots of her 6 recipe card recipe book she left home with. There is nothing quite so intimate as one's recipe book.

MY RATING: G

Many thanks to NetGalley for giving me a digital copy of this book for review.

[Ann · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thanks to the publisher for an advance reader's copy.

Gorgeous. So many food memoirs, while enjoyable, are on the light side, but Nina Mukerjee Furstenau's writing made intensely specific flavors and scents flood my mind. She could have created a comic story of an Indian girl living in Kansas, but her reflections and conclusions are thoughtful and wise.

[Paula Margulies · Rating 5 out of 5]

Biting through the Skin is a moving and thoughtful memoir about the family traditions of a Bengali woman growing up in Kansas. Poignant and heartfelt, this book touches your heart with its lovely, poetic tone and insightful reflection on what it means to grow up in a country with different traditions and values than those of your family. The author reminisces about her past in a soothing, intelligent way that touches you with its wisdom and depth. There are many wonderful vignettes about family members, all centered around preparing meals and sharing food. In this book, food becomes a reflection of culture and, also, a conduit to finding a way back to our roots. In Biting through the Skin, Furstenau takes us on a journey that is filled with love, as she reveals the dignity and strength required of a family juggling the retention of its traditional values with the challenges of assimilating into a new culture. The connection between her parents' native land and the author's American homeland is made through sharing, eating, laughter, and joy. There is much great writing here, along with some terrific Indian recipes, making this a book to savor and return to long after the first read.

[Lilisa · Rating 2 out of 5]

Wish the author had spent more time developing the story line - was a great concept to parallel her cultural perspective with the myriad regional cuisines of India coupled with recipes. But the execution fell short. Growing up in the American heartland, the author's family did everything they could to lead an "American" life - a successful family doing the usual things American families do, but in the evening her world is transformed through her mother's traditional Indian meals - one of the only ways through which parents clung to their roots. There are hints of how the author felt growing up - the feeling of being different in the all white American heartland, but she doesn't explore it further, nor does she explore the same feeling of being different when she visits India - a foot in each world. For this and more, a not-so-high rating.

[Calamus · Rating 5 out of 5]

Furstenau’s re-telling of her childhood, growing up in Pittsburg, KS and traveling to India several times to visit family, is guided by the tastes of India. Her prologue strikingly begins: “I am always combusting something.” From that point on, the author takes the reader along for a culinary journey of her past—from the comfort foods her mother makes and the hamburgers they serve when American guests come for dinner, to the spread laid out when Swami graces her family with a visit and traditional tea time in India. Inserted at the end of each chapter are a few Indian recipes easy enough to follow and create in your own kitchen.

In addition to describing how food brought India to her American lifestyle, the author graciously expands on growing up with a blend of Indian customs and American culture. For example, keeping two calendars, one for Indian holidays and one for American holidays, and having to decide which to celebrate and honor. Keeping her commitment to volunteering for one holiday keeps her from attending Indian festivities in the neighboring town. However, it is Furstenau’s ability to show how two very different cultures can be blended that makes this memoir so interesting and how many of the differences she was so hyperaware of while growing up really weren’t all that different from the other kids’. There is a wonderful scene of Nina as a 9-year-old sneaking up into her mother’s closet to root through her mother’s beautiful saris and gold bangles and other decorum. Touching the beautiful fabrics felt so separate from her friend’s mother’s closets, however, what little girl hasn’t ogled her mother’s fancy clothes: the perfume that only comes out on special nights, the beaded black dress hanging at the back of the closet?

A wonderful memoir, Nina Mukerjee Furstenau’s work is sure to please. The writing is succinct but opens up for beautiful descriptions and is overall a wonderful read.

www.calamusworks.com/blog

[MaryJo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nina Mukerjee Furstenau lives in nearby Fayette, Missouri, and I had heard about her and this book from coverage in the local paper, and friends who had heard her speak. The author was born in India in 1962. Her parents migrated to the US, first to Chicago, and then, after their first Chicago winter, to Pittsburg, Kansas in 1964. This is where Nina and her brother grew up. This memoir records Nina’s experiences negotiating her bi-cultural identity. Of course, those experiences are bound up with growing up in a particular time and place, and also with searching for a meaningful life. Her nuclear family maintained ties with their Bengali relatives, and visits to them are a part of the story. In Kansas, the parents are extremely careful to conform outwardly to the mores of their community. At home however, Nina grows up eating Indian food, and stories about food, and the family recipes are the anchor of this book. When it is time to go to college, Nina decides to attend the University of Missouri where she meets her future husband. The two of them participate in the Peace Corps, and serve together in Tunisia, where Nina makes connections through food, and brings home the recipe for couscous that is featured in that chapter. I found my appreciation for the writing and the person I was getting to know increased throughout the book. When I finished, I felt I had been treated to a satisfying meal, served by a generous hostess.

[Niya · Rating 2 out of 5]

After finishing the collection of essays I can see where Mukerjee Furstenau was trying to go with her work - and it is a powerful place. Finding a space, when one is visibly othered, especially in a small North American town prompts a wide range of compromise in order to "fit in" in a way that goes beyond tolerance. Her exploration of how the food of a homeland she never truly knew defines her identity is trying at best and will leave all except the most focused reader slightly exhausted as they try to see the point of the collection. It's a reasonable effort, but the execution fails to deliver.

[Mommyhungry · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this book, which evoked my own childhood, not because I'm of Indian descent growing up in Kansas, but because my neighbor in suburban Houston was of Indian descent and I've long wondered how she might have viewed being in the minority. I remember her mom's yogurt, tea, roti, chappels, saris, bindis, bangles, and the like, while I taught her about Easter baskets and Christmas. This book, with its recipes and reflections, allos me another perspective on this part of my childhood.

[Anne · Rating 4 out of 5]

A satisfying mix of memoir, cookbook, and travel guide. Each chapter has related recipes at the end. The recipes are user friendly: most of the ingredients are familiar and available in our area.

Nina Mukerjee Furstenau was born in Thailand to Indian parents. They moved to Chicago, then Kansas when she was still a baby.

Her family settles in Pittsburg KS, a small town near the Missouri border. They're happy there and find community with their neighbors. Although there are no other Indian families in her town, they connect with some in neighboring cities and join them for religious celebrations and house parties. Her family return to India many times for visits with their large extended family.

Her childhood sounds close to idyllic. Her adolescence is fairly typical. The only imperfection seems to be her feeling of “otherness” and at the same time longing for more of a connection with her family’s Indian culture. Her parents speak Bengali to each other, but not to her. Although she understands it, she is self conscious of her pronunciation and so doesn’t speak it. Food is her main connection to her culture, and she recognizes and embraces it, and tries to share it with her Kansas friends, with little success.

The title refers to an encounter on a bus in India when she is five or six. She is eating a sandwich at a rest stop, and she’s about to eat a banana when she notices a small boy outside the bus, watching her eating, with his hands held cup-like, as if for begging. She throws him the banana through the bus window. He grabs it and bites into it without peeling it, through the skin. This story echoes throughout her life and she credits it partially for her decision later to join the Peace Corps.

The writing is excellent, often beautiful. There is humor. Her descriptions of the taste of food border on poetry. She clearly loves to eat and cook, and this comes through clearly. Highly recommended.

[Debra · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had the pleasure of hearing Furstenau three years ago at a food writing symposium. She read the defining memory that is at the heart of this memoir and I was hooked. (She had a very soothing voice, too.)

I totally enjoyed reading about places I know. Furstenau grew up about an hour away from me. I remember some of the restaurants and places that she mentions as well as relating to growing up in the heartland of America. (I figure she is about five years older than me.)

Certain chapters are outstanding but some just missed there mark a bit. She does include recipes for each chapter which were well written and seem easy to follow.

Although this is not a comedic book, I did have to laugh out loud as they take a revered orange-robed Hindu teacher (visiting from India) to Grand Lake for a ski boat ride.

I would reccomend this book to anyone interested in Indian culture, growing up in the 70s in the Heartland, and interested in how food can help one find self and purpose.

[Tej Dhawan · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book read to me as a meandering (albeit welcome) journey through the author's life. The core thesis did t appear to me until chapter 18 where it revealed itself as an ode to the cultures born within her and the ones she absorbed into them in the life so far.

The book travels back and forth through time and place, going between her ancestral state of Bihar in India and the home state of Kansas, USA. Each part of her life story is punctuated by food, with recipes and memories generously sprinkled I line.

Though I read the significant influence of women in her life, the stories of male influence were equally present. From the young boy in her early years to the many cousins and adults, it is clear that love surrounded her. Her memories of food and family, people and culture are inextricably linked.

An easy five star read for me.

[Donna Reedy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I learned alot about Indian food!
I liked the book.

[Rose Mary Walsh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good insight into what it feels like to be from another culture.

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book! I could not stop reading it, and couldn’t wait to see what happened next in her story. It is a cross-genre memoir that is part biography, part travel journal, with equal measures of culinary and cultural background and recipes. The book tells the author’s story with an emphasis on how she relates the food, cooked first by her mother and later by herself, and her Bengali Indian background into life in a small Kansas town. As a first-generation immigrant, it is interesting to see the world through her eyes, as she struggles to discover the part of herself embedded deep within her culture, though she had a tendency to hide it away from mainstream Americans for fear of being labeled “different”. I liked how she talks about the recipes her mother got from her family in Bengal when she first got married, and how these were the same recipes that the author used when she joined the Peace Corps and was living in Northern Africa with her new husband. I also enjoyed the link she made between food and language, and how much the two are linked. It made me want to do an anthropological study on the topic. Then there are the recipes, which are at the end of each chapter and explain the author’s story almost better than anything else. Can’t wait to try the Carrot Halwa, Ginger Mashed Potatoes with Savory Filling, Minced Meat Curry, and Yogurt Fish. This book reminded me of another excellent culinary memoir entitled "Maman’s Homesick Pie: A Persian Heart in an American Kitchen".

There were a lot of excellent quotes in it, especially the ones relating to food, such as “Food was my tether to heritage; it revealed my world and transformed me into someone willing to share that story with others,” and “Food holds memory. It holds story. It can represent who we are.” For another more-detailed review on the book, check out this blog post: http://thechicagolibrary.wordpress.co.... For the blog of the author, which includes her wonderful writing, recipes and a list of her publications, check this site out: http://ninafurstenau.com/.

[Jill Orr · Rating 5 out of 5]

I should start by saying that I don't usually read memoir, and certainly not food memoir - but I was compelled to pick up this book and once I did, I had a hard time setting it down. The author drew me into her story with such rich, descriptions that I literally felt like I could see each scene as clearly as if I were watching a movie. The story is that of the author who grows up in middle America (Kansas) and how she learns about her family's Indian heritage largely through the food her mother prepares. You also get a unique perspective on India as she describes her trips back to see family. Having never been there myself, I really appreciated her attention to detail in how she described the land, the food, the people - paying attention to all five senses. Again, it was like I could see it as I read. In one of the most poignant scenes, we see a young Nina visiting India - I think she was 6 or 7. Against her mother's wishes, she throws a banana to a hungry child begging to her from outside the bus she's on. Nina watches the boy, who is too hungry to even peel the fruit, bite the banana right through the skin. The image is startling and touching all at once.

The other thing I really liked about this book was how it cemented for me how much of our heritage is connected with food. Of course I think I knew that on an instinctive level, but reading about how Nina learned about her parents, grandparents, the land she was born in, and moved to, who she was and how she straddled two completely different cultures - it really made me think about my own food traditions and how they tell the story of my family. It was just all-around a very enjoyable read - and such a nice break from the same-old, same-old. Oh - I almost forgot the recipes! The book has the MOST DELICIOUS sounding recipes, that made my mouth water, despite the fact that I have never eaten many of the dishes she describes!! Now that I have her family recipes, though, I will definitely plan to attempt at least a few of them. So not only is it a great read, but you get bonus recipes as well. Love a little extra value in my books :)

[Jenny (Reading Envy) · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a very quick read since each chapter ends with a significant recipe section. Nina Mukerjee Furstenau tells the story of growing up in Kansas in the 60s-70s, the child of Bengali parents, living in a very unBengali place. The book starts with a description of the traditional Durga Puja holiday, a week long celebration after the monsoon season, a holiday that can't possibly be fully experienced in Kansas no matter what a community might do.

The entire book has an element of sadness and loss to it - the author has a connection to her background through the food she learns to cook, but she never learns the language fully, only gets to visit Bengal on a rare occasion, and even getting to know her cousins' names is difficult. Still, the descriptions of food and the dichotomy of home life (with Bengali elements) vs. public life (as Americanized as possible) bring her experience very vividly into the mind. One chapter is named, "All Our Tupperware is Stained with Turmeric," which to me was the best example of the combination of East and West!

Also included are recipes from when her parents lived in Thailand, and when she and her husband worked for the Peace Corps in Tunisia.

"It is not as easy to shape a life that includes all the important bits from the past as it is to follow a recipe, especially when you leave your homeland."

I received a copy of this from NetGalley in exchange for nothing other than the opportunity to read it. I am always honest in my review.

[Tricia · Rating 3 out of 5]

So many intriguing recipes in here that I'd like to try, but I probably never would so I will return the book to the library.

"The public spectacle of India garnered wide-eyed wonder from visitors, but Kansas provoked a bored glance through tinted car windows along Interstate 70. The 423-mile stretch of Kansas interstate between Colorado and Missouri was in mere drive-by status for most Americans. Few inside the thousands of cars, SUVs, and trucks that cruised along marked the moment when, with a spreading flush, the fields greened in the spring. Even the wind was ignored by passersby. Still, it blew its image over the grasses, pushing stalks down in masses as big as several city blocks to release with a flourish all at once. This recompense of Kansas beauty came from staying put, not passing through." (p 10)

"But it is said that what can be named with words is not real, merely a reflection of truth or what is called God. Each word is a trail of crumbs, evidence. Each word, a gift in proportion to the spirit in which it was uttered. Inside my head, Bengali made its noises. But even as I grasped for them, my Bengali tongue went still. I was down to one true fluency and American English had nothing to say about all the god stories in India. The food on my palte, too, was silent. The world sang its reality: birds, frogs, water, all singing, all wordless. Language became a fetter and at age five, school age, I had no word for sorrow." (p 82)

[Jaylia3 · Rating 5 out of 5]

From Northern India to small town Kansas--a culinary memoir that’s a joy to read

Biting Through the Skin combines graceful, almost poetic writing with recipes--mainly from India--and an account of growing up Indian in small town Kansas that is both entertaining and fascinating. When Nina Mukerjee Furstenau’s parents first moved their young family from Bengal to the United States they settled in Chicago, but within a year had decided that a small Midwestern town with its close connections was more like home than a multicultural but anonymous big city. While growing up the author longed for a greater association with the land of her birth, which she partially achieved rifling through her mother’s silk saris, and eavesdropping on a visiting guru but her most consistent connection was through food. Living a part American, part Indian life puts the author in a good position to compare the two cultures, and her reflective, deeply thought out musings about their differences make this “food memoir” stand out by encompassing philosophy, religion, linguistics, and even science, along with cuisine.

[Danielle · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of my book clubs recently started a new series on books related to food. This book would have been an excellent choice as it is part memoir and part travel diary revolving around food and full of lots of recipes as well. The author examines her life as a first generation emigrant from India to Kansas in the 1960s. She examines the way that food is such a huge part of who we are and looks at it both through the lens of someone whose family adopted the white bread foods of Kansas and the feelings of sadness at losing some of her heritage by not learning all the Indian food customs of her culture. As an adult she attempts to reconnect with some of the things she feels like she lost while still embracing the new in her own family and eventually her husband's family. Though many of the recipes sounded delicious I'm too lazy to make most of them as Indian food is notoriously time consuming. This was a short little book. If you're into food/memoir writings I would recommend it.

[Maureen Stanton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Furstenau's book is eloquent and stealthily engaging. What I mean by that is that there is no huge drama in this memoir (like so many memoirs), which makes it particularly amazing that the book grips you from the beginning, pulls you into the worlds that Furstenau renders (the small towns and villages in Missouri or India, into the kitchens in particular), and compels you to read on to the end. That is the hallmark of great writing--lyrical prose, sensory description, a personality and intelligence that you enjoy spending time with, a deeply humane sensibility that illuminates the world.

[Sandy D. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very enjoyable memoir about growing up (east) Indian in the heartland - small town Kansas. Lots of interesting perspectives on being the only minority family in your town, unconscious racism, the links between culture and cuisine and food and memory and generations, and religion. I particularly liked the parts where the author visited India as a child, and her reflections on how that shaped her adult worldview.

Also - lots of great recipes!

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a lovely, engaging, beautifully written memoir. You could call it a food memoir (mouthwatering recipes included), but there is so much more to it. The author was born to Indian parents and raised in Kansas, and each story is a piece of her journey to bring the two cultures together within herself.

[Denise Morse · Rating 2 out of 5]

Unfortunately I just could not get into this book. I was really hoping to like this and enjoy it but the writing style was just not my thing. It felt a little more disjointed than I prefer.

[Kelly Fitzgibbons · Rating 4 out of 5]

Memoir, history, cookbook all in one. A personal story about where culture comes from and how it converges at the table.

[Tracy · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author writes of her Indian heritage through food despite her upbringing in Kansas. I could not get into it, but I might give it another try later.

[Podaire · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good cultural insights shared between cultures. Some reviews said there was humor in the book. I did not find humor. Would love to try some of the recipes in each chapter.

[Rosemary · Rating 1 out of 5]

Meh. Didn't finish it.