Mother Tongue

WINNER OF THE JANE GRIGSON TRUST AWARD

‘Amazing, original, boundary breaking.’ Diana Henry

‘One of the most gleeful cookbooks of 2023.’ Stylist Magazine

‘His recipes have a dynamism that is genuine, personal and flavour-led… dazzling and yet warmly inviting.’ Nigella Lawson

With recipes for everything from Coconut Crab Crumpets to Kasundi Keema Lasagne Rolls, award-winning food writer Gurdeep Loyal celebrates the hybrid third-culture cooking of second-generation migrants around the world today.

Born in Britain to Indian parents, Gurd felt constantly pulled by the clashing expectations of both cultures. But through his passion for food and cooking he was able to embrace the delicious contradictions of his plural British Indian identity.

In Mother Tongue he explores his culinary upbringing that combined ‘authentic’ home-cooked Punjabi food, with ‘inauthentic’ curry-house Tikka Masalas, the Western foodie cannon, and a wanderlust for travel in pursuit of flavour. What results is a flavour amplified intercultural cuisine, that is a delicious culinary self-expression of his second-generation experience of the world today.

Gurdeep serves up over 100 knock-out recipes, including a mouth-watering Miso-Masala Fried Chicken Sando, Sweet Chilli-Gunpowder Roasted Cauliflower, Desi Kofta Meatballs with Sticky Mango-Lime Tomatoes and Chocolate-Orange Jalebis, all combined with expert know-how on building, blending, and remixing global flavour combinations. Mother Tongue is bursting with vibrantly spiced, colourfully flavour-forward recipes for home-cooks to explore and be inspired by every day.

About the author

Gurdeep is a Food & Drink Consultant and has worked for leading brands including Innocent Drinks, Harrods’ Food Halls and most recently as Head of Food Trends for Marks & Spencer, travelling the world for gourmet inspiration to bring to the dinner tables of the nation. He is also a food writer, speaker on the topic of ‘Food, Cultural Appropriation & Race’, and curator of the online platform Mother Tongue – which celebrates food stories of migration, race, (in)authenticity and second-generation culinary identity around the world. He also has a monthly column in Olive magazine.