THE CALCUTTA KITCHEN (Mitchell Beazeley, £20) brings together recipes (written up by the London-based Bengali chef, Udit Sarkhel), beautiful photographs (by Jason Lowe) of the making, selling and eating of food in the city, and varied, affectionate accounts of food as a cosmopolitan way of life in Calcutta by Simon Parkes of The Food Programme on BBC Radio 4 . Parkes writes as an insider to Bengali domestic life across the entire social spectrum, making his account of food a way into the rich and bewildering muddle of life in Calcutta. His eye for the human or historical detail is sensitively realized by Lowe’s camera. There are separate chapters on home cooking, fish, vegetables, Islamic cuisine, Park Street, street food, Bengali sweets and the local festivities and rituals. Since Sarkhel introduces himself as a Bengali, he ought to have known that mustard sauce is not “khashundi” but kashundi, and the Bengali for she-goat is not “pathar”.