Monica Bhide, Seasonings

monica@monicabhide.com

Monica Bhide is an engineer-turned-food writer and cooking teacher whose recipes are fun, accessible and tasty.

Her column, "Monica Bhide on Seasonings," will appear weekly on Scripps Howard News Service beginning Tuesday, Oct. 12. Each column will feature a single spice, herb or seasoning, with a tested recipe and photo. The feature will be slugged SEASONINGS.

Bhide's work has appeared in Food & Wine, The New York Times, Parents, Cooking Light, Prevention, Health, SELF, Bon Appetit, Saveur, The Chicago Tribune, The Washington Post, AARP-The Magazine, Town & Country, The Christian Science Monitor, Washingtonian and many other publications.

She is a frequent contributor to NPR's "Kitchen Window." Her essays have been included in "Best Food Writing" anthologies (2005, 2009 and 2010), and she has published three cookbooks: "Modern Spice: Inspired Indian Flavors for the Contemporary Kitchen" (Simon & Schuster, 2009), which "Top Chef's" Padma Lakshmi named one of her favorite books in Newsweek; "The Everything Indian Cookbook" (Adams Media, 2004); and "The Spice is Right: Easy Indian Cooking for Today" (Callawind Publications, 2001). She is working on her fourth book about spices.

Born in India, Bhide moved to the United States in 1991. She has an engineering degree from Bangalore University and two master's degrees: one in information-systems technology from George Washington University; and the other in industrial-systems management from Lynchburg College. She currently resides in the Washington, D.C., area with her husband and young sons.