Barkha Cardoz's Unique Path to Publishing a Cookbook
How a spice blend collaboration led to a cookbook project
In this week’s episode, Barkha Cardoz generously shares her story of an atypical and deeply personal cookbook project. Barkha had spent most of her career raising a family and supporting her husband, the late chef Floyd Cardoz. When Floyd died suddenly from COVID in 2020, Barkha dedicated herself to completing a project she and Floyd had recently started: a masala spice blend collaboration with Burlap & Barrel, a relatively small (at the time) spice importer. As the spice blends hit the market, customers began requesting recipes for cooking with them, and these appeals blossomed into a cookbook project.
“It was literally a labor of love. Not just by me — by the community that supports us, that loves the spices, that loves Burlap & Barrel, that loves the masalas. It’s literally a book that’s made with love.” - Barkha Cardoz
I hope you’ll tune in to this week’s episode to hear the full story - in Barkha’s own words - of how she launched her new career and wrote her first cookbook, With Love & Masalas. Her cookbook journey offers many good lessons in alternative publishing, including being self-funded, working with a brand rather than a publisher, and crowd-sourcing recipe testing.
More About Floyd Cardoz and Burlap & Barrel
If you’re unfamiliar with Floyd Cardoz - and his impact on the food world - or perhaps Burlap & Barrel is new to you, here’s a bit more context for Barkha’s story.
Floyd Cardoz1 may be best known for opening and operating the renowned Tabla restaurant in Manhattan’s Flat Iron District in partnership with restaurateur Danny Meyer2. Tabla was open from 1998 to 2010, but even today, the sprawling modern Indian-American3 establishment is still cited as “the restaurant that changed what Indian cuisine could mean for chefs and diners in the United States”. 4
After Tabla, Floyd opened and operated two more restaurants in New York City, North End Grill and Paowalla (which became Bombay Bread Bar). In his native Mumbai, he opened the Bombay Canteen and O Pedro, the latter influenced by his family’s Portuguese roots in Goa. He also won “Top Chef Masters” in 2011 and authored two cookbooks, One Spice, Two Spice (2006) and Flavorwalla 5(2016).
“The two most important things in a person’s life are the legacy we leave and the impact we make on others.” - Floyd Cardoz, 10/3/2012 6
But Floyd’s story does not begin and end with his many successes in the restaurant business (or food media). He is also remembered for his big-heartedness, vision, and mentorship, which led in a roundabout way to the beginnings of Burlap & Barrel, a spice company and social enterprise known for its excellent quality spices sourced directly from small farms around the world. Years before starting Burlap & Barrel, one of the founders, Ethan Frisch, had worked in the kitchen at Tabla, so when Ethan and his future business partner, Ori Zohar, started importing small quantities of single-origin spices7, Chef Cardoz became one of their first buyers - and supporters. As anyone familiar with Burlap & Barrel’s offerings knows (or perhaps you saw them on Shark Tank in 2023), they’ve become known for their collaborative spice blends, and it was Floyd and Barkha Cardoz who worked with them on their very first collaboration. The masala blends, called the Cardoz Legacy Blends, are still available at Burlap & Barral, and some proceeds from each jar go to a charitable cause.
Links from today’s chat:
With Love & Masalas: Everyday Indian Recipes from My Kitchen to Yours (links to the Floyd Cardoz Legacy website)
Cardoz Legacy Masalas (Burlap & Barrel Indian spice blends developed with Barkha and Floyd Cardoz)
Flavorwalla: Big Flavor, Bold Spices, by Floyd Cardoz
Visit the Everything Cookbooks Bookshop to purchase a copy of books mentioned in the show
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Next up:
On next week’s show, Kate and I interview Rachel Belle, a journalist and Seattle media personality, about her debut cookbook, Open Sesame. We get into Rachel’s background in broadcast journalism and how a professional friendship led to a publisher reaching out to her with a cookbook idea. We learned a lot talking to Rachel - especially about the importance of maintaining joy and humor - and your own unique voice - in your work.
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Molly and the EVCB gang
Floyd Cardoz’s obituary in the New York Times and tribute in Grub Street
Founder and Chair of Union Square Hospitality, perhaps best known for starting Shake Shack, Danny also opened Eleven Madison Park in 1998 (the same year as opening Tabla).
Tabla featured a huge dining room, a downstairs bread bar, a spice room, and a staff of over 100. Shortly after it opened, Ruth Reichl wrote a rave review in the New York Times. “For me, it was love at first bite,” she wrote. “This is American food, viewed through a kaleidoscope of Indian spices.”
from Cardoz Legacy website
Barkha talks about the second life for Flavorwalla in the episode.
from Cardoz Legacy website
Earlier this year, Anna Grace Lee wrote a great piece in The New York Times about how Burlap & Barrel got stated, Where Do Your Spices Come From?
Listening now!!