Bringing a family’s culinary legacy to life through the Andhra cookbook.
What I did
Editorial Design
Photography
Photography
Credits
Komala Rao Sista / Author
Arati Rao, Narasimha D Rao / Editors
Arati Rao / Food Stylist
Suneeta Rao / Pre-Production
Arati Rao, Narasimha D Rao / Editors
Arati Rao / Food Stylist
Suneeta Rao / Pre-Production
Featured in
Melodies from my kitchen is a collection of vegetarian Andhra recipes by Komala Sista Rao. These recipes carry with them the creativity, labour and love of generations of women in the author’s family, finely crafted and perfected over the years.
What’s Cookin’?
What will you do, when your mother is a sublime cook and she always wanted to make a collection of the heirloom recipes? You’ll make it happen and gift it for her birthday, of course. Aarti Rao-Shetty, Narasimha Rao and their siblings had the same idea and asked me if I would help them put this book together. This is how we did it.
First Taste
I started by familiarising myself with the recipes, figuring out a rough overall structure for the book and sketching possible layout directions. Arati and Narasimha had most of the recipes ready and they were working on getting the remaining recipes ready.
Popcorn on a Skillet
From the full recipe list, around 30 were picked for the shoot. We planned the shoot for 4 days, with an extra day as backup. We started around 9 in the morning, with photography equipments and cooking preparations setup in the same space, shooting till 10–11 in the night and having the same food once the shoot was done.
Cook to Perfection
After a quick round of shot selection and feedback, I started editing the photos and developing the recipe page layouts. Test prints were made for few recipe pages before continuing with the rest of the book. Through out the design process, the layout and visual elements underwent reviews and tweaks till we reached the final version of the book.
Out of the frying pan, into the world
The final version of the book was printed on time for the author’s birthday. A few extra copies were printed for the family. After a long search, the client family have partnered with Jaico Publishing House and the book is out now. It is now known as The Andhra Cookbook, and available through major retail and online shops.
