In the days when the Internet was still a dream no one had seen and 'Googling' recipes was many decades away, most women relied on magazines and cookbooks for new recipes to try at home. Through happenstance, Pune-based filmmaker Jyotsna Shahane came across many an unsung publication from small-town publishers while researching on the art of cookbook writing for her blog, The Cook's Cottage. "I found a book by Udupi-based homemaker-author Narayani Nayak in a Konkani friend's home, and was immediately fascinated by the details that she listed and the precision of her recipes. They were published in women's magazines like Eve's Weekly (1947) and Femina (1958), however, they presumed the knowledge of cooking skills which several young women did not have," says Shahane, who has released her latest book, The Classic Konkan Cookbook: Based on the original recipes of Narayani Nayak.

Fascinated by the food from the Konkan, from Maharashtra to the northern tip of Kerala, Shahane finds many indigenous vegetables here, different from the rest of India. "Fed up of the ubiquitous butter chicken and gobi aloo, I felt that these simple Konkan preparations, which make the best of fresh and local ingredients, needed more attention," says Shahane, who rather than reinvent the wheel, decided to republish Nayak's book, albeit in a new form.