Mallika Badrinath

Mallika Badrinath was born and brought up in Salem, Tamil Nadu. She graduated with a degree in Home Science. At the age of 21, she married a chartered accountant from Chennai. In one of her interviews, Mallika mentioned that she rarely cooked before her marriage, as she lived in a joint family of 25, and there was a cook and an assistant cook to do the work. However, she was interested in recipes and usually collected them in a scrapbook. After some time, she had ten such handwritten books. The recipes she would write down had a little of her variations, too based on her own experiences. Her husband encouraged her to publish these books, so she published her first book, 100 Vegetarian Recipes in 1998. Her books started to get quite popular over time, and she took up writing full-time, publishing them under the name of her own publishing house, Pradeep Enterprises.

Today, she is the author of 29 cookery books in English and 30 books in Tamil, which contain more than 4,000 recipes. Some of them include Murukkus and Mixtures, Varieties of Vegetarian Tiffins, Healthy Salads, 100 Chutney Varieties, etc. Her books have also been translated into Hindi, Kannada, and Malayalam. In the 1990s, more and more people started getting access to cable television in India. And at that time, there were not that many cooking shows in India.

As a result, Mallika began getting offers for television shows on cooking, first with Doordarshan and then with Sun TV. Mallika also writes articles for magazines such as Snegithi, Gokulam Kadir, Kunguman, Mangaiyar, and Kumudam. Her cooking shows on Sun TV and Jaya TV have run for more than 15 years. She also has her own YouTube channel, by the name, Mallika’s cookery. She does health-oriented programs for Rotary Club, and Lions Club too. Mallika is also the recipient of several awards, such as the Priyadarshini Award, Mahila Ratna Award, Arusuvai Gnaana Kalamani, Acharya Award, Best Cookery Show Host Award, Nala Maharani Award and many more.