When we started our YouTube channel back in 2020, it was about sharing Ammini Aunty's love for cooking with others. What it became was a community of Pinchers who shared our love and spent time learning how to make these meals with us. Now, her recipes have been made into her first cookbook.
Ammini Aunty (Saramma/Sara) did not learn all her cooking skills from her childhood in Kerala. At the age of seventeen like many of her friends and cohorts in nursing, Sara began a nursing career in Mumbai the erstwhile Bombay. She initially learned cooking because of necessity, and she found cooking to come naturally to her. She soon found herself learning new recipes and techniques from friends and family, and after over forty years of experimenting with food and feeding family and friends, cooking became her go-to hobby and passion.
Throughout the years, those who have tasted her cooking, have praised her talents, and come back for more again and again. When her children requested she document her recipes on YouTube, she was more than willing to do so. It makes Ammini Aunty so happy when viewers share pictures of their recreations of her recipes and share how the videos helped give them the confidence to try Kerala-style cooking.
The "Ammini Aunty's A Pinch of Kerala" cookbook is filled with traditional Kerala recipes, some popular Indian dishes – such as Butter Chicken and Chili Chicken – snacks like banana chips and Indian mixture, to desserts like Gulab Jamun and fruit salad, and even Spaghetti and Meatballs! Inside the cookbook, you will also find tips for cooking, recommended recipes to start with, a spice catalog, pictures of what you'd find in Ammini Aunty's kitchen, and over 100 recipes with QR codes/links to videos with Ammini Aunty showing you how to cook. Her cookbook encourages people to try new things and experiment on their own. As Ammini Aunty says, "If you put your mind to it, you can do it!"
