Rachel Gurjar’s New Cookbook, ‘East to East,’ Celebrates Flavors Near and Far

Raised in India and based now in Brooklyn, chef Rachel Gurjar has crafted an ode to the cuisines of both parts of the world with East to East: Recipes and Stories from Mumbai to New York. Bursting with 101 recipes for everything from spicy butter masala pasta to dirty chai espresso martinis, the cookbook rejoices in the culinary possibilities that arise with blending cultures.

This week, Vogue spoke to Gurjar—formerly an associate food editor at Bon Appetit—about Mumbai’s rapidly expanding food scene, venturing to Queens for regionally specific South Asian treats, and the books that were on her mental mood board as she wrote East to East. Read that conversation—and find a fried-fish recipe guaranteed to wow with minimal fuss—below.

Vogue: How did this project first come together for you?

Rachel Gurjar: Well, I first started writing the proposal in 2019. Then I kind of shelved it because of the pandemic and job changes and all these things that came up for a couple years, and then I picked it back up after I joined Bon Appetit, because I felt like I was on stable-ish ground creatively and I was cooking again. I started working on the proposal again and took a few meetings with agents. My eventual agent and I ironed out the proposal a bit more and shopped it around in the beginning of 2024. We sold it in January, and then I didn’t work on it for another eight months because I was at BA doing a full-time job and union stuff. Then I dove back into the book after my time at BA.

I love the way you talk about existing between cities and cultures in East to East; is there anything from New York you crave that you can’t get when you’re in Mumbai, and vice versa?

I love Sichuan food, and that’s something I miss a lot in Mumbai and India. Thai food gets generalized a lot, but it’s so regional—Lao food, Cambodian food, northern and southern Thai—and I crave those flavors deeply, and I’m not really able to find them in Mumbai. Mumbai’s restaurant landscape is changing so much, and it has grown a lot in the past five years, so you can get really good Korean and Japanese. Sushi is big right now, and there are a few Southeast Asian restaurants coming up. But I haven’t seen a Cambodian or Laotian place there. But even in New York, Lao food is mostly pop-ups. I also feel like there’s really great Mexican food here that India is missing. Tex-Mex food is big there, but not Mexican.

Eating a cuisine in the country that it was born in is just a completely different experience, and there are so many things I’m not able to find in New York, like regional Maharashtrian food. There have been a lot of regional restaurants popping up in New York in the last three or four years, but the stuff my neighbor auntie makes that is hyper-regional to her community is just not here. I mean, when it comes to street food, there’s just no comparison to Mumbai, or, frankly, any region of India

Is there a favorite area of New York that you rely on for Indian food?

Jackson Heights comes close, but there are a few different diasporas from the Indian subcontinent that live there and have restaurants and businesses there, and what happens is that South Asian food and Indian food all kind of get rolled into one. It’s a mixture of Pakistani, Bangladeshi, all delicious foods that I love. I love a puchka, but a puchka is different than a panipuri that you would get in Mumbai, and even within that, a panipuri or puchka that you would get in Kolkata is different than a golgappa that you would get in New Delhi. Jackson Heights has my heart, and I do go there when I’m craving stuff, but it’s a different experience.

Are there cookbooks you love that helped inspire East to East?

The design part of this book was very important to me, and one book that inspired me was Andy Baraghani’s The Cook You Want to Be; I just loved so many little elements from it, and it was in my deck that I made for inspiration. Zaynab Issa’s book Third Culture was on there, and Alison Roman’s Nothing Fancy was on there. I also love the Night + Market cookbook.

I just made a salad from that cookbook!

It’s the best. The Sofreh cookbook is also so good and robust, and I love the Gjelina cookbook; it’s older, but the ingredients are so fresh and seasonal. A lot of the recipes have a 360 approach, which I like to do too. I want flavor but I also want texture. I want it to look pretty and I want to teach somebody something new, whether it’s a technique or about an ingredient or as simple as how to plate something or cut something. I like using a multipronged approach in my recipes, and I like having a balance of things that are accessible to everyone. That’s where recipe developers who work at magazines or in food media come into play, because my entire job for the past six or seven years has been to make sure that recipes work for the home cook. When I was thinking about the kind of recipes I wanted to include in this book, there are projects, but they will tell you they are projects. I won’t say, “Oh, this recipe only takes 45 minutes,” and then two hours later you’re still doing it. It’s like: “This recipe is going to take two hours. It’s going to take some patience and time, but the flavor payout is going to be huge, and I won’t make you waste your ingredients or time.”

If you were cooking dinner from East to East tonight, what would you make?

I think I would make the whole rava fried fish with two sauces and marinades and crunchy veg. I love that this dish is very interactive and looks really grand and big and feels like a feast, but it really is very easy to pull off.

This conversation has been edited and condensed.

Rachel Gurjar’s whole rava fish with tamarind and garlic-ginger sauce

The first time I ate real Thai food in New York, I couldn’t believe what I’d been missing. The explosion of flavor and the effortless complexity floored me—all the things I grew up with, just expressed in a completely different way. One dish that left a permanent impression on me was the pla tod samun prai, a whole fried fish served with a vibrant herb salad.

Back in India, we love frying things too. My father, an occasional but enthusiastic cook, used to make surmai fry—a type of mackerel coated in a spiced rava (semolina) crust, deep-fried until crisp, and served with bright green chutney. So, naturally, I wanted the best of both worlds (as I usually do). Why settle for one when you can have it all, right?

My version brings together the freshness of Thai herbs—mint, cilantro, and Thai basil— with a bold Indian marinade of ginger-garlic paste and warm spices. Here’s how to build the perfect bite: Grab a lettuce leaf, add a spoonful of rice and some of the crisp fried fish, drizzle with both sauces, and pile on the herbs. The flavors sing in harmony. It also makes a showstopping party dish served family style—interactive, messy, and completely worth it.

Ingredients:

Tamarind Sauce

¼ cup [60 ml] tamarind purée (such as Cock or Wang Derm) or one 2 in [5 cm] round tamarind pod

3 red or green Thai chiles, stemmed and chopped

2 garlic cloves, peeled and thinly sliced

1 Tbsp fish sauce

1 Tbsp lime juice

2 tsp sugar

½ tsp fine sea salt

Marinade

7 red or green Thai chiles, stemmed

1 garlic head, cloves peeled

1 small red onion (7 oz [200 g]), roughly chopped

3 in [7.5 cm] piece of fresh ginger, roughly chopped

2 Tbsp lime juice

1 Tbsp Kashmiri red chili powder

1 tsp fine sea salt

½ tsp powdered turmeric

Fish

One 1½ to 2 lb [680 to 910 g] whole fish, such as black sea bass or red snapper, cleaned

Fine sea salt

6 cups [1.4 L] vegetable oil or avocado oil

½ cup [70 g] all-purpose flour

½ cup [80 g] sooji or coarse semolina flour

Garlic-Ginger Sauce

¼ cup [60 g] reserved marinade

1 Tbsp hot oil (you can use the oil from the wok before cooking the fish)

1 tsp lime juice

½ tsp fine sea salt

For Serving

2 cups [240 g] steamed jasmine rice

Lime wedges

4 or 5 red Thai chiles

1 bunch Thai basil (about 2½ oz [70 g]), leaves

½ bunch mint (about 1 oz [30 g]), leaves

½ bunch cilantro (about 1½ oz [40 g]), leaves

Crunchy lettuce or cabbage leaves

Instructions:

1. To make the tamarind sauce, if using a tamarind pod, add it to a small bowl and pour ½ cup [120 ml] of hot water over. Let this steep for 10 minutes, then smash the pod with your fingers to separate the pulp from the pod. Discard any seeds and fibrous parts. You should be left with the pulp. To a small bowl, add the tamarind purée, chiles, garlic, fish sauce, lime juice, sugar, and salt and stir to combine. Set aside until ready to serve.
2. To make the marinade, to a blender, add the chiles, garlic, onion, ginger, lime juice, chili powder, salt, and turmeric and blend into a smooth paste with no chunks. Transfer ¼ cup [60 g] of the paste to a small heatproof bowl and set aside.
3. To cook the fish, place the fish on a cutting board and pat it dry with paper towels. Using a sharp knife, make crosswise slashes every 2 in [5 cm] along the body, cutting down to the bone. Flip the fish and repeat on the other side. Generously season with salt, including inside the cavity and slashes. Rub the remaining marinade all over, making sure to tuck some into the slashes and under the cheeks. Cover and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes or up to 8 hours.
4. In a large wok or skillet (make sure it’s large enough to fit the whole fish) over medium-high heat, warm the oil until it reaches 365°F [185°C] on an instant-read thermometer.
5. To make the garlic-ginger sauce, to the ¼ cup [60 g] of reserved marinade, add 1 tablespoon of the hot oil from the wok, followed by the lime juice and salt. Stir to combine and set aside.
6. Spread the all-purpose flour and sooji on a rimmed baking sheet or large plate and mix to combine. Dredge the fish evenly, making sure all of it is covered in the flour, shaking off any excess.
7. Holding the fish by the tail, carefully lower it headfirst into the oil, laying it down away from you before gently releasing. Fry until the skin is deeply browned and crisp, 4 to 6 minutes per side, using tongs and a fish spatula to turn and a spoon to baste the top of the fish with hot oil a few times. Carefully transfer the fish to a wire rack to drain, then transfer to a large platter.
8. Serve with rice, lime wedges, whole red chiles, basil leaves, mint leaves, cilantro leaves, lettuce, the tamarind sauce, and the garlic-ginger sauce. Make little parcels with the fish and all the accompaniments to make a perfect bite. Store leftovers in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to 2 days.

Recipe excerpted from East to East: Recipes and Stories from Mumbai to New York, out now from Chronicle Books.