Good News...and a visit to India!

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Gigi Pandian is having a good month. Putting it mildly. Sometimes wonderful things happen to wonderful people and this is one of those times.

In the recent weeks, here's Gigi's life: 

An Agatha nomination for her locked-room mystery short story "The Hindi Houdini" 

Her combined book sales pushed her into Amazon's Top 100 Most Popular Authors ("briefly", she insists on saying)

The first book in the series stayed #1 for days on the Amazon Kindle Cozy and Women Sleuth categories, top 10 Mystery/Thriller/Suspense Kindle Books, and top 10 overall NOOK book sales. 

AND she got a Library Journal review: "Pandian’s second series entry sets a playful tone yet provides enough twists to keep mystery buffs engaged, too. The author streamlines an intricate plot....[and] brings a dynamic freshness to her cozy." – Library Journal

AND her first book, ARTIFACT, hit the USA today Bestseller list!

AND--Her newest book, PIRATE VISHNU was published from Henery. All in all, very very nice.  And--she cooks! As you will read.

Adventures in India and Indian Cooking 

                       with Gigi Pandian

     Gigi is currently celebrating the release of a new novel –and also news that her locked-room mystery short story “The Hindi Houdini” has been nominated for an Agatha Award for Best Short Story!

“Forget about Indiana Jones. Jaya Jones is swinging into action, using both her mind and wits to solve a mystery… Readers will be ensnared by this entertaining tale.”—RT Book Reviews

My new novel, PIRATE VISHNU, came out earlier this month, and I’ve been having a blast talking about India, where part of the book takes place. To shake things up here on Jungle Red today, I thought I’d share a story about India AND one of my favorite Indian food recipes – one that’s both delicious and easy.

I was born and raised in California, but my dad is from India, so I’ve had the opportunity to travel there several times. India can be an overwhelming country – it’s massively crowded, oppressively hot, and the foods are oh-so-spicy – but once you scratch the surface, it opens up its charms. The more times I visit, the more I want to return.

On my last visit in 2010, I was in the midst of drafting the second novel in my mystery series. As a follow-up to a treasure hunt that took Jaya Jones to the Highlands of Scotland, I was setting the new book in both San Francisco and the southern tip of India. (Yes, I picked a series premise well! A treasure hunt mystery series means I have no choice but to travel to fascinating places!)

I thought I had my twisty puzzle plot all figured out – until we arrived in India got on the open road along the south-western coast of the country.

  

Yes, that’s an elephant sharing the road with an autorickshaw (three-wheeled taxi), cars, motorcycles, and bikes!

Covering hundreds of miles on Indian roads to visit family from Trivandrum up to Bangalore, I knew that the experience would make its way into the book – although I didn’t yet realize how instrumental it would be to the plot. The colorful hand-painted trucks, the scents unleashed by the monsoon rains, and the confounding roads lacking street signs stirred up my imagination. When we were studying a map on the way to Kochi, the juxtaposition between the picture on the map and the reality we were experiencing hit me like a bolt of lightning. That moment gave me a plot twist that became central to the story.

Here’s the scoop about PIRATE VISHNU (the second book in the Jaya Jones Treasure Hunt Mystery Series, following ARTIFACT):

A century-old treasure map of San Francisco’s Barbary Coast.

Sacred riches from India.

Two murders, one hundred years apart.

And a love triangle…

Historian Jaya Jones has her work cut out for her.

1906. Shortly before the Great San Francisco Earthquake, Pirate Vishnu strikes the San Francisco Bay. An ancestor of Jaya’s who came to the U.S. from India draws a treasure map…

PRESENT DAY. Over a century later, the cryptic treasure map remains undeciphered. From San Francisco to the southern tip of India, Jaya pieces together her ancestor’s secrets, maneuvers a complicated love life she didn’t count on, and puts herself in the path of a killer to restore a revered treasure.

More at: http://gigipandian.com/pirate-vishnu/

And now, here’s one of my favorite Indian recipes. It’s a variation on a classic dish – my spin on the dish was a happy accident I discovered when cooking one day while I was busy. I let the onions cook longer than I’d meant to, and they caramelized. Instead of ditching the onions, I went ahead with the recipe – and it turned out even more delicious than the original!

CARAMELIZED ONION DAHL

INGREDIENTS:

1 cup yellow split peas (or Indian yellow lentils, called toor dalh)

1 tsp turmeric

1 tsp sea salt

½ tsp ground black pepper

¼ tsp cayenne pepper (or more to taste)

1 large onion, thinly sliced

2 Tbsp olive oil

1 tsp cumin seeds

DIRECTIONS

Rinse the yellow split peas, then cook them with 2 cups of water, turmeric, salt, black pepper, and cayenne pepper. Bring to a boil, then simmer for 45 minutes. Warm the olive oil in a skillet on medium heat and add the sliced onion and cumin seeds. Cook the onion slowly for the duration of the time the lentils are cooking. This will caramelize the onion, bringing out its natural sugars. Stir the onion mixture into the cooked lentils.

Thanks for having me on Jungle Reds today! Do you have a favorite dish that was inspired by a trip you’ve taken?

Connect with Gigi on her website http://gigipandian.com/ , Twitter https://twitter.com/GigiPandian, and Facebook https://www.facebook.com/GigiPandian.