If you've ever signed up for an online cooking course with Egullet, if you have cooked an Indian recipe from The Spice is Right, if you have taken a cooking class in Indian cookery at a private house in an area served by the Dunloring metro station, you will probably have come under the influence of Monica Bhide. An Indian who arrive in Washington in 1991, she's a cookbook writer, a food writer, and an Indian cuisine instructor who designed the on-line cookery school for Egullet.

But none of these was what she was to begin with. Originally, Bhide trained as an engineer. Born in India, she grew up in the Middle East and came to DC in 1991 to get a degree in engineering. Her first job on graduating was with Ernst & Hewitt in the training department, teaching leadership skills. It was a good job, she says, that took care of her family. But it didn't seem to her that this was her purpose in life.  "I didn't know what I was meant to do." She threw that question out as wide as it could go. "God?", she says she asked, "Was it really to design E-products?" This direct communication with the heavens peppers much of her conversation.

Her husband intervened with a suggestion. You write at the drop of a hat, he told her, you cook at the drop of a hat. Why not write about food? She already had a cookbook published, The Spice is Right. She'd sent it cold to a publisher and heard nothing. Then two years on, they contacted her. "They said, You remember that book you sent us?" They were ready to publish it. She chuckles. She wasn't persuaded she could make a career out of this single event. Still, one day she came home and told her husband she wanted to be a food writer.

The first morning after she'd left her job, she found herself at home at her desk, her one young son at school, and asked herself in a complete panic, Now what do I do? A practical, determined woman, she put her hands to her keyboard and began to write. She's brought this discipline to the job every day since. Since that moment, she's written for many different publications, including the New York Times food section, with a cover story.

The Spice is Right, her very first cookbook was a collection of recipes she put together for her sister based on menus. But in that book, as well as in her latest, Modern Spice, for which Mark Bittman has written the foreword, Bhide wrote about the relationship between family and food. "It's always about relationships and food bringing people together." It took one year to write, she says, but "to get content? My entire life. I couldn't have written this when I was 21." Sections open with reflective essays on her life, on Indian life, on the diversity of Indian cooking - on anything, in fact, that has compelled her to cook and to write. Short preambles launch each of the recipes which have a distinctly contemporary feel. This is not brown food to lift the roof of your mouth. It's colorful, light, multi-facetted in flavor and extremely easy to execute.

Both of Bhide's parents are good cooks, her father with a more contemporary lean than her mother. "He loves to experiment, find stuff and put it together. He has a very good sense of ingredients. My mother is very traditional."

Born in the North of India, educated in the South, with a husband from the West, Bhide's cooking covers the whole Indian repetoire. Developing the recipes wasn't easy, she says, with a 2-year old darting around. These days, her elder son loves being in the kitchen with her and runs about with a spatula in his hand.

As well as developing recipes for her books and her articles, Bhide gives cooking classes in her kitchen and food writing classes on line. For both, her approach is flexible. "I don't stick to any policy of authenticity: if it tastes good, eat it," is the message she passes on to her students. At her home she holds several cooking courses a year, taking no more than four students for demonstrations that precede a full meal.

She's also given cooking classes on line. But these days, her E-ducating, so to speak, is confined to food writing courses. 10 is the maximum number she coaches at one time, giving out writing assignments that run from recipe creation to food columns. She also offers one-on-one classes to aspiring writers who want her focused attention. It's important to diversify, Bhide says. "Magazine writing alone is not a way to make a living. You have to do many different things." So she's also cooked a class with the chef of Bethesda's Passage to India, which she describes as a good traditional-style restaurant.

With all the strings she has to her bow, one thing she won't do is open a restaurant. "It requires a massive level of dedication. Anybody can open a restaurant. Only I can be a mother to my kids."
 
Now polishing a collection of short stories she's been working on for the past four years, Bhide sees very little difference betwen cooking and writing. "People are always afraid to try. That's why God invented the trashcan. Same thing with writing: you know it's garbage and trash it. Writing is just like cooking. It takes practice to get the flavors right, to understand ingredients, how these things work and how to use them, to get flavors to work any how."

For anyone cooking with Indian ingredients, she offers this sound piece of advice: "Every Thanksgiving, open up everything. If it doesn't smell, throw it."

Modern Spice: Inspired Indian Flavors for the Contemporary Kitchen, Simon & Schuster, $25.

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