There are too many tenets in cooking; it shouldn’t be this way. Thinking in a certain, rigid manner about cooking stresses me out and renders me irascible, so I make rasam to remind myself of the volatility of the act and also to remember what my mother often says about making rasam, cooking, and life…
The fact that there is so much vitriol online is a given these days. That the majority of it is directed at upma (from time to time), a quick-to-make savoury breakfast dish, is undeserved. Talk about it to any South Indian child (or adult) and the response is the same: slander and hate about its…
I can tell you about my life in rice: I eat too much of it. My phone is filled with photos and videos of fluffy biryanis, homely pulaos, gloopy risotto, sweet payasam, kanji, stir-fries, dosais, idlis, idiyappam, kozhukattai, aval, bhel puri, and just about every rice dish I hold dear. But more and more, it…
Everything great starts with an allium. That is the solemn fact of cooking. And so it is true here as well – an impromptu dinner salvaged by onions and dill, in tandem with mottled slate grey lentils slowly braised in coconut milk and vegetable stock. Both dishes are carb-heavy, but that doesn’t have to be…
Autumn brings with it so much to feast on: leaves change colours, heat gives way to piercing coldness, and time shrinks into oblivion. The colours change in the kitchen too: from deep red beets and gloriously orange squash and sweet potatoes to hearty apples, pears, and root vegetables. In all, there is a lot of…
Both the provenance of this aubergine recipe and the aubergine itself have something in common: they share a serpentine history of origin and lineage. Let me get the recipe out of the way first: this is a mashup of my mother’s recipe for podi kathirikkai (aubergine with a powdered spice mix) which she got from…
Some days call for moderation in eating. Some days call for amends. And there are days, more often than not, when only pure indulgence will do, drawing on reservoirs of pleasure (minus the guilt). For such days, I always make a version of chole (also known as chana masala) or chickpea curry to spoon on…
Is there such a thing as an authentic curry, especially since there are as many curry recipes as there are people in the subcontinent? This isn’t authentic in any absolute way, but it is authentic to me in that I have made it in my kitchen numerous times, each version differing from the other based…