About the Author

Nik Sharma is the writer, photographer, and recipe developer behind A Brown Table, the award-winning food blog. He lives in Oakland, California.

Reviews

"Another cookbook that shows a great use of spices is Nik Sharma's Season: Big Flavors, Beautiful Food, a gorgeous collection of recipes with unexpected flavour combinations. So if you're looking to bring some new tastes and textures to the table, this one is for you. It's deeply inspiring and the mouth-watering flavours are guaranteed to switch up your cooking." -- Evening Standard
"Nik Sharma's Season has all the makings of a book that's about to break out: recipes that are high on flavor, but low on laborious techniques; gorgeous photography that Sharma shot himself on the days he wasn't writing columns for the San Francisco Chronicle; and the compelling narrative of "a gay immigrant, told through food" that ties everything together." -- New York Magazine
"The debut book from author Nik Sharma lives up to the 'beautiful food' billing. He's an India-born, California-based food blogger, acclaimed photographer and able wordsmith. His recipes cross continents for inspiration and combine spices and ingredients in exciting ways. It's a great read too." -- delicious.
"Season by Nik Sharma (Chronicle GBP26, from Tuesday) and Black Sea [...] can both be read as much for their prose as for their recipes. The former is a personal account of life as a gay immigrant, the latter a travelogue around one of the lesser- known food paradises on earth. Plenty to keep you occupied into spring and beyond." -- The Sunday Times - STYLE
"A fresh take on Indian dishes using readily available ingredients" -- Glamour online
"The dishes in Nik Sharma's debut cookbook, "Season", trace his journey from Mumbai to his current home in California - chaat masala-grilled pork chops, curry leaf popcorn chicken, ghee-and-elderflower cake - with writing so clear that even the most timid home cooks can master his recipes." -- The New York Times
"Season is particularly good for anyone who loves cooking with spices. Toasted cumin lemonade, apple masala chai cakes, charred sugar snaps - Sharma blends influences and flavours from his country of birth, India, with those of California, where he now lives." -- Diana Henry, The Sunday Telegraph
"He deftly blends flavours, colours and textures in dishes - such as his upsidedown orange and fennel cornmeal cake - that are both familiar while being utterly original and fresh." -- The Independent
"Everyone else should seek out this lovely spice-filled debut from Sharma, which has already been a hit in America. Sharma is the author of the blog A Brown Table, in which he writes, as here, about cooking in America as a gay immigrant. The photographs, shot by the author, have a Caravaggio beauty and his seasoning is bold and homely." -- The Sunday Times
"Influences from his childhood in India, life in America and, most importantly, bold flavours weave their way through his stories and enticing recipes like margarita naan and curry leaf popcorn chicken." -- LoveFood
"What I love is he photographed the book himself as well and it's not bright, light pictures. It's deep, warm, really dark and you can see his hands appearing.. they are so so beautiful. The recipes as well are a really good combination of Indian food and America food where he's tried to combine both sides to his food." -- Chetna Makan
"Right out of the gate, this first cookbook from the San Francisco Chronicle columnist made a big noise in the food world, because of the author's distinctive voice and his warm, beautiful photography." -- Washington Post
"Born and brought up in Bombay, where being openly gay was not a possibility, he won as scholarship to the University of Cincinnati. While working as a medical researcher in the US, he began a blog, then a column, and now there is Season. He expertly blends flavours of his childhood with those of his adopted home." -- The Observer Food Monthly
"The best cookbooks are, of course, so much more than recipe collections, a description that feels more than apt for Nik Sharma's Season. Sharma's book tells the story of his journey from Mumbai to Oakland as an openly gay immigrant (he came to the U.S. to escape India's anti-gay laws and to get a degree in molecular biology), and the recipes within are bursting with the flavors of India (garam masala, green mango) without once succumbing to the catch-all term of "ethnic cuisine," and instead presenting the recipes through the lens of his own complex experience. Beautiful things can happen when people are allowed to be every part of themselves - no book better illustrated that this year." -- Grub Street, Best Cookbooks of 2018
"Nik Sharma's new cookbook Season is the story of an immigrant told through food. He brings his Indian influences to the American kitchen with an understanding of ingredients that reaches far beyond both continents. His mastery of flavour is seen in simple, powerful dishes like roasted carrots with sesame, chilli and nori; hot green chutney roasted chicken; or a date and tamarind loaf." -- House & Garden