At age three, chef and cookbook writer Saee Koranne-Khandekar remembers standing in the balcony of her grandmother's south Bombay home, waiting for the aroma of roasting suji. "Aai would make me identify the exact roasting point when she was making upma or sheera. It honed my sensory abilities because mind you, from the balcony at Napean Sea Road, you only smell the salt and stench of the sea more than anything else."

It is memories and recipes from aai's kitchen that find their way to Pangat—A Feast; Food and Lore from Marathi Kitchens (Hachette), her third book. Pangat refers to community eating. She said the title answers this writer's first question to her: What is Marathi cuisine? It traces Maharashtrian food across the regions—Khandesh, Vidarbha, Konkan, Marathwada and Desh—and then through sub-communities. In the recipe section, Saee makes room for andaaza and intuitive cooking. "I may recommend a teaspoon of tamarind extract but if the extract you are using is thicker, discretion has to come in," says Saee, who started Angat Pangat, a Facebook group dedicated to Maharashtrian cuisine in 2015. In 2017 she launched an online magazine called Diwali Pangat, which has seen two editions so far.