Auburns, rusts and sepias are seeping into the landscape, slowly and surely painting over the greens. The purple-flowering Pride of India outside my kitchen window has a carpet of fallen leaves at its feet. Like slow tears, it sheds leaves all day and soon its white branches will be quite shorn of their proud plume. As much as I love summer and mentally resign myself to the inevitability of winter, the warm…
“Nice day for a white wedding…” drawled Billy Idol in his black voice on my phone as I wrestled (like I do everyday) with the lunch menu for a warm Saturday afternoon. His words lit the end of a long fuse in my brain, exploding in a star-burst of an idea to make a cold, white soup I’d seen in my newest cookbook – Fresh Spanish by Sergio Vasquez gifted to me by…
On any given day you are likely to find at least five types of fresh and/or dried chillies in my fridge and kitchen cupboard. I simply love the flavour variations of different chillies as does my family. Some are mild and sweet, some smoky, others fiery hot and still others that have a peppery tickle. Substituting one kind for another can drastically alter a dish, so it’s important to use…
Having survived a smothering by skies saturated with endless columns of cumulonimbus that almost caused a repeat of the Great Flood, I spent the first clear day chasing the sun at my local food market. During the rain, I sought the warm cocoon of spicy curries and deep, rich soups. But all that forced hibernation made me want to run out of my cave and inhale the freshly-spun sunshine. And the…
I made this coconut prawn curry in the midst of four days of incessant rain that brought with it a deluge of memories of monsoons back home in India. Pewter clouds, fecund greenery, cool caressing breezes, drenched afternoons reading romances, spindly-legged white cranes, ageing, moss-clad walls, swarthy silhouettes stealing kisses by the seaside and of course steaming cups of fragrant chai with pakoras ( fritters made with onions or a…
Remember cheese cubes? They were all the rage in the eighties – little creamy rectangles neatly encased in shiny foil wrapping. Growing up in India meant that there were only two or three brands of cheese available in markets. The most popular brand was of Amul – a processed cheese whose taste is an unforgettable part of my childhood memories (in soft focus!). Only later in life, when I sampled…
It even drives my experiments in the kitchen and many, in fact, most of my food-related ideas are born from it. I’m always seeking to discover unlikely ingredients that work magic together and bring out the best in the other. My attempts at baking bread are a part of this journey. I have been baking bread on and off for some years now and I admit my failures outnumber my…
Birthdays and bitter-sweet memories….one doesn’t exist without the other; a package deal if you like. Some birthdays are keenly awaited – milestones marked by big celebrations with family, friends and in some cases the entire village. Others sneak up on you as you go about your daily business, making you stop albeit briefly, to raise a toast and tick off another year on the calendar. And then there are birthdays…
Every time I have a dinner party I rummage through my recipe collection with grandiose plans of making decadent, rich and completely over-the-top desserts – rich cheesecakes, trifles topped with Himalayan mounds of whipped cream, syrupy gulab jamuns….the list is endless. But each time, I chicken out as my mental calorie counter kachinnnnggs crazily and poof! all thought of sweet gluttony vanish faster than I can say “Cake!”…
So, determined to end this tug-of-war, I decided to give a little to get a little (in simple terms, a healthy compromise). From my side I broke my meatless meal rule – but I did opt for very lean meat. And for his part he agreed to a ‘more veggies with a little meat’ dish (which was great!) The peace having been brokered, I made a Thai-style meatball and rice…