Ramin Ganeshram

Ganeshram was born in New York City to a Trinidadian father and an Iranian mother. She attended Stuyvesant High School of Science and earned a master's degree in journalism from Columbia University, both in Manhattan. Later she trained at the Institute of Culinary Education[1] also in New York City, where she has also worked as a chef instructor. For eight years Ganeshram worked as a feature writer/stringer for The New York Times regional sections and another eight years for Newsday as a food columnist and feature writer.

In addition to contributing to a variety of food publications including Saveur, Gourmet, Bon Appetit and epicurious.com, Ganeshram has written food/culture/travel articles for Islands (as contributing editor);[2] National Geographic Traveler; Forbes Traveler; Forbes Four Seasons and many others. She was as a reporter and writer on Molly O’Neill’s magnum One Big Table (Simon & Schuster 2010). Her own cookbooks include Sweet Hands: Island Cooking from Trinidad & Tobago (Hippocrene 2006;2nd Ed 2010) and The America I Am: Pass It Down Cookbook (Smiley Books, 2011) with Jeff Henderson[3]

She is a contributor to the Encyclopedia of World Foods (Greenwood Press 2010) and a peer reviewer for the Journal of Food, Culture and Society. Her work also appears in the second edition of The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food & Drink in America, which was nominated for an IACP Cookbook award in 2014 and in Savoring Gotham also forthcoming from Oxford University Press.

Ganeshram has received seven journalism awards for her writing and an International Association of Culinary Professionals Bert Greene culinary journalism nomination. Her cookbook "FutureChefs: Recipes from Tomorrow's Cooks Across America and the World"[4] won a 2015 International Association of Culinary Professionals Cookbook of the Year Award in the Children, Youth & Family category.[5]

In January 2010, she founded the charity Food 4 Haiti,[6] to raise money for the UN World Food Programme’s effort in the earthquake ravaged Haiti. She was formerly on the board of the Meriden, Connecticut-based non-profit, My City Kitchen, which teaches kids about food and cooking as a way to instill healthy lifestyle habits while raising self-esteem. Currently, she is the co-chairperson of the Food Access Coalition an Fairfield County, CT based nonprofit that works to promote food justice in the local area.

Her first work of fiction Stir It Up![7] focuses on a teen chef who gets a shot at cooking competition show on Food Network. Ganeshram herself has appeared on Food Network on the show Throwdown! with Bobby Flay and has made appearances on CNNfn, Good Day New York, and other news and lifestyle shows for both radio and television.[8]

In 2018, Ganeshram published The General's Cook, (Skyhorse, NY) the novel she had been working on previous to the publication of Birthday Cake. In the novel's acknowledgments the author reprised public statements regarding her objections to and attempts to persuade the publisher to alter what she called the "offensive nature" of the picture book's illustrations.[12][13][14]

As reported by Craig LaBan of the Philadelphia Inquirer in March 2019, Ganeshram and her Westport Historical Society colleague Sara Krasne uncovered compelling evidence suggesting Hercules, who had never been seen again after 1801, in fact lived in New York City where he died on May 15, 1812.[15] The discovery offers never-before seen scholarship on Hercules.

• List of people from Westport, Connecticut

• In Conversation with Exceptional Women

• From Asia to the Caribbean, Appetite Intact (New York Times)
• Heritage Radio Network Interview
• WAMU Public Radio, Local Restaurant World Tour: Caribbean Cuisine
• In the Kitchen With Sweet Hands, WTNH
• Featured Chef: Trinigourmet
• Westport.dailyvoice.com
• Westport Patch, Ramin Ganeshram: Cooking Together Creates Bonds
• Westporters Cookbook Wins National Award
• George Washington’s enslaved chef, who cooked in Philadelphia, disappears from painting, but may have reappeared in New York