Food says so much about where you’ve come from, where you’ve decided to go, and the lessons you’ve learned. It’s geography, politics, tradition, belief and so much more and these next two weeks, we invite you to dig in and discover the rich, ever-evolving taste of America in 2011. Catch up on past coverage and read the live blog from our Secret Supper in Chicago.

It was, of all people, Gwyneth Paltrow who inspired - and agitated - me to write a cookbook.

There it was online: Paltrow and her new cookbook, My Father’s Daughter.

Heck, if she could do it, so could I.

So began my three-month journey to put together a cookbook dedicated to a way of cooking that many Americans consider exotic or foreign. For me, though, these recipes have been a way of life: they are the traditional foods of my family from Pakistan.

Spices are everything in South Asian cooking. It's rare that my mom cooks anything without dhaniya, zeera, lal mirch or haldi. Cumin, coriander, red chili and turmeric (the English names, respectively) run in my veins.

But my quest to find out how much of these spices to use and how to incorporate other foods with them was a small mountain of a problem: most South Asians don’t keep precise written recipes of the foods they regularly make.

The secrets (as they may as well be) are passed down by word of mouth from family members or friends. Even after recipes are received, the mind's eye leads them and people cook by "andaaza" or by estimated measurement.

If I wanted to put together a cookbook as a gift to my mother for her recent birthday, I was going to have to deploy the skills of an investigative reporter.

I tried cooking with her, which helped...some. She'd say things like, "use about a handful of fried onions," until she saw what my massive fried onion fist looked like and corrected the original instruction accordingly.

I drilled her nearly every evening for specific recipes and pressured her to give me concrete measurements. I even called my aunt to resurface recipes my mom made when I was a child that she has since stopped making.

Paltrow's book included a foreword by Mario Batali, which inspired me to get someone to write one for my book too. I recruited my Nani (my mother's mom) who still lives in Karachi, Pakistan, for the task.

A few weeks later, I received a completed foreword from her and the first line read, "Ever noticed a mother bird feeding her nestlings?" It was immediately clear her foreword was going to be a little different from Batali's, but it had the exact personal touch and the heart that I wanted from a family member.

Her last line even mentioned how she was so happy I had learned to cook because it would ultimately lead to a happy marriage (her way of nudging me in that direction).

I went through stacks of old family photo albums, and found one picture for the introduction - it was of the day my family received our American citizenship. We posed with a cake my mother had made with white frosting, sliced strawberries and blueberries arranged to look like the American flag.

At the time, I remember thinking how silly it was my mother made a cake just because we were changing our passport color from green to blue. Looking back, and even thinking about how I've "Americanized" many of her dishes over the years, I realize just the enormity of what that moment represents in my cooking - and beyond.

Despite the fact that many South Asian women don't use formal cookbooks for South Asian food, compiling family recipes is something that many South Asian women commonly do - even my mother had partially started a hand-written journal filled with cooking instructions.

I wanted mine to look professional though and so I used a company called AdoramaPix to lay out my photos and text. I had already written up the recipes, so I was certain this step would just take a weekend; how hard could it be to copy and paste?

Working with an online template was a painful Tetris game though; it required maneuvering recipes to a different section of a chapter based on their length, or tweaking some recipes to get them to fit on a given page.

Because so many of my mom's recipes were given to her or emailed to her by different friends and family, many of them had different abbreviations and styles. I had to compose a stylebook for myself, and decided that there would be many words I'd abbreviate: like teaspoon and tablespoon.

I also had to choose a font size and type for the picture captions that I could keep consistent throughout the book, in addition to dozens of other minuscule decisions. None of them were hard to make, but keeping what I wanted consistent in my 78-page book was a tedious and eyeball-aching copy-editing project.

Finally, when most of my own book had been put together, I bought Paltrow's book. I didn't look at many cookbooks while doing my project because I wanted my own ideas to shine through.

After looking through her book, I surprisingly found I had an incredible admiration for what she did and the fact that it seemed she was really hands-on in making the book.

Still, judging Paltrow's book solely by its cover was a great thing for me: it set me off on a three-month cooking, photography and book-making journey and it gave me the spark I needed to make my very own cookbook.

Here are a few recipes from my mother:

Daal
This is a spicy Pakistani lentil recipe

Ingredients
1 cup masoor daal (whole orange lentils)
1 tsp salt
1 tsp red chili powder
1 tsp coriander powder
pinch of turmeric
1/2 yellow onion, minced
1 tomato, diced
1 1/2 serrano pepper, minced
1/4 cup oil
1 tsp whole cumin
1 medium garlic clove, sliced
cilantro for garnish

Cooking Directions
1. Place the daal, salt, red chili powder, coriander, turmeric, onion, tomato and serrano pepper in a pot with about 2 cups of water on high flame. Once the mixture has come to a boil, lower the flame and cover the pot with a lid.
2. The daal will be cooked and the water will be absorbed in 15-20 minutes. Thoroughly mash the daal mixture or blend using a hand blender
3. Heat oil in a separate small fry pan. When the pan is hot, add whole cumin and garlic. As the garlic starts getting golden brown, pour the cumin and garlic mixture (with the oil) into the pot with the daal
4. Cover the pot again and let it sit off the stove for a few minutes to cool before serving
5. Stir the mixture; plate and add cilantro for garnish

Aloo
Means potato in Urdu. The way South Asians cook aloo is typically very flavorful and spicy.

Ingredients
1/4 cup oil
3 medium-large potatoes, peeled and sliced
2 stems of curry leaves (Available at Indian store. Not mandatory, but it will add to the taste)
2 garlic cloves, minced or blended
2 serrano peppers, thinly sliced or blended
1 tsp whole cumin (seeds, not powder)
1 tsp salt
3/4 tsp red chili powder
1 tsp coriander powder
1/8 (a pinch) of turmeric powder
1 tomato, diced
cilantro for garnish

Cooking Directions
1. Cover the surface of a large pan with a thin layer of canola oil (about 1/4 cup oil) and place it over a stove on medium flame
2. Saute in the curry leaves, garlic and cumin until the garlic turns light golden (this should just take a few minutes)
3. Stir in the green chilis, salt, red chili, coriander, turmeric so they are well-mixed (about a minute)
4. Stir in the potatoes and occasionally flip them so both sides of slices start cooking
5. Once the potatoes start turning golden, stir in the tomato
6. If the potatoes are sticking to pan, stir in a quarter cup of water
7. Then cover the pan with a lid and place the stove on low flame for 10 minutes
8. Plate and add cilantro for garnish

Karahi Chicken
A karahi is a wok-like pot that many South Asians use to cook. My mother doesn't use one to cook this, but the name stuck and we always refer to it as this in my family)

Ingredients
1/4 cup oil
3 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
2.5 serrano pepper, minced or blended
2 garlic cloves, minced or blended
1/2 tbsp ginger, minced or blended
1 tsp cumin powder
1 tsp coriander powder
1 tsp red chili powder
1 tsp salt
1/8 (or a pinch) of turmeric
1 tomato, diced
cilantro for garnish
dash of lemon juice for taste

Cooking Directions
1. Defrost the chicken and cut into squares or strips
2. Cover the surface of a large pan with a thin layer of canola oil (about 1/4 cup of oil) and place it over a stove on medium flame
3. Stir in the serrano pepper, garlic, ginger for about a minute until you can smell the aroma (about a minute)
4. Saute in the cumin, coriander, red chili, salt and turmeric for about a minute
5. Mix in the chicken and stir it until it’s almost cooked (this will take a few minutes until the surface area of the chicken appears cooked)
6. Stir in the tomato for about 2-3 minutes
7. Put the lid on, turn on low flame, and allow it to cook for another 10 minutes
8. Double check that the chicken is fully cooked by cutting through a few. If still needed, cook the mixture on high flame for another few minutes
9. Plate and add cilantro for garnish