The Business of Recipes: Indian story cookbook

Aim

To document Punjabi recipes and immigrant stories, culture and wisdom for the next generations and donate to schools, colleges & libraries.

About Me

I’m Surinder Hothi, author of The Business of Recipes and founder of multi-award-winning North Indian food business Pure Punjabi. My mission is to preserve, promote, and teach the original Punjabi food brought to the UK by the grandmothers who arrived in the 1950s. 

Growing up between two cultures, I experienced growing up with the challenges of navigating the two opposing cultures of my Indian traditions within modern Britain — and how food, family, and property, along with grit and determination shaped our lives.

I have worked hard to document and preserve my parents' teachings, my mother's cookery and my culinary heritage. Through my work, I aim to keep the original and traditional food methods alive for the next generation, as a legacy to my late mother & father, and also for all immigrants whose recipes, hard work, and ingenuity, built families, businesses, and communities.

About the Book

Why did I write this book?  It was never my intention to write a cookbook. We already teach traditional Punjabi cookery of the grandmothers, as passed down from mother to daughter, via our workshops to the indigenous population, curious to discover how we really cook and eat at home. Then we noticed our own people starting to come?  Why - because they have no one left to ask and because the original methods are dying out. We also noticed the third generations losing all access to original healthy food, as well as the children of Indian and English parents, not having full access to, and the stories of, both cultures, plus a lack of representation or history in their schools.

The Business of Recipes is a story cookbook that goes beyond recipes. It documents how Indian immigrants used food and property as a business model — turning food and bricks into sustainable livelihoods: homes, shops, hotels, and bed & breakfasts, food stalls & markets!  The book shares practical insights into the pioneering nature of immigrants, entrepreneurship, property, hospitality, and food business, while also exploring culture, parenting, nutrition, conflict of east and west, and the crucial and overlooked role of the contribution and status of women, who make the heart of the family.  

Each chapter ends with 4 'Food for Thought' sections on: 

• Business & money
• Immigrant & British perspectives
• Culture, family & parenting observations
• Nutrition & health notes...

...inviting the reader to consider opposing eastern and western perspectives and differing viewpoints.

It’s an autobiographical story cookbook, a guide and a celebration: part cookbook, part business memoir, and part cultural history.

Beta Reader feedback from three Beta testers has come in with the following reviews:

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"…as a lifetime BIG reader I think it's marvellous.  It just is.  

 What you have done is reinvent the cookbook to be so much more - social commentry, social history, autobiography, family history..."

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"I think this is a stunning idea - an autobiography and cook book combined - unique - so you arouse the reader’s curiosity on two or rather three counts, basic things...- food and life and business. The recipes and the photos are stunning - mouth-watering. And the essential simplicity plus depth of the recipes, which you emphasise, is a real selling point as well as really authentic. And actually it is the authenticity of these recipes that is a winner … it is frankly business  orientated - as your culture makes you - and this is a new angle. " 

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"...a refreshing and thoughtful blend of culinary creativity and practical business insight, brought together with Surinder Hothi’s natural warmth and clarity of purpose..."

Why It Matters

This book is about more than food — it’s about heritage, resilience, and identity. By preserving these recipes and stories, we keep alive the knowledge of how our parents and grandparents created opportunity, independence, and legacy. It shows how women, family, culture, and food worked together to thrive in a new country, offering inspiration for today’s and tomorrow’s generations. 

This book is a way of reaching and teaching more people across all races, religions and cultures, than we can physically do via our workshops. It will make the stories and the recipes accessible to those we cannot reach and help those searching for centuries-old food, nutrition and practices. 

This is the book I would have given my children if I had not taught them, the book I would give a young couple of Asian heritage, the book I would give European families to help them understand a little of the legacy of colonialism and as a gentle introduction to thinking and considering the topic of immigration and immigrants who can carry the one thing with them that cannot be taken away, or left behind, and that is their traditional food.

How Funds Will Be Used

This is a work to preserve authentic old-school Punjabi recipes, tell the immigrant stories of hard work, sacrifice, adaptation and integration, and the traditional cookery of the grandmother’s. With no Publishing House or agent, my work to create and bring this work to life has been entirely self-funded by myself and my daughter Safia, but print costs make this an uphill battle to complete. To create a premium, high-quality coffee-table style cookbook needs funding for print costs.Then our knowledge and recipes will be available to everyone and books can be shared and donated to schools and communities. Your support helps bring these valuable stories and original recipes to life in a high-quality, beautifully produced book — keeping food, culture, and heritage alive for generations.

The funds raised will cover:

• Professional editing for formatting the book to be print-ready
• Professional editing for a PDF/Kindle version
• Printing costs of the first batch of 2,000 books in Europe
• Shipping them to storage in the UK
• Delivery costs.
   

Every pledge brings us closer to sharing these recipes, stories, and lessons with a wider audience.  It is important to preserve our culinary heritage for 2nd & 3rd generations who are forgetting our original grandmother's food, as well as to introduce the hearty, nutritious and delicious food of Punjabi farmers to the wider British population. In an era of increasing food allergies and intolerances, due to ultra-processed foods, the health and nutrition benefits of farmer's food makes home-cooked Punjabi food superfood!

Join Me

By backing this publication you’re helping preserve a traditional culinary heritage, support women’s stories and female entrepreneurs, and share knowledge about food, business, and culture to ours and other cultures and communities. 

Every pledge, share, and spreading the word helps make this book a reality. Thank you for being part of this journey.

Funding method

Keep what you raise – this project will receive all pledges made by 13th July 2026 at 12:00pm