Panfusine

Some of us get to make resolutions not once, but twice every year. The first of course, on January 1st along with the rest of the world and the second time around, the last day of  the Indian festival of Navaratri, The 10th day that marks the end of the festival is known as Vijaya Dashami - the day when scores of kids , willing or not,  are marched off to commence music, dance classes or start learning to play an instrument. Navratri, once you strip it of its patriarchal trappings, is an empowering festival celebrating the Mother Goddess. Each day, her various attributes (a daughter, a mother, a wife, a warrior, an intellectual,  as an unfettered free spirit etc.) are explored and worshiped. and the food offering invariably is a protein rich Sundal made with various lentils - a meat substitute, a nod to a pre-Buddhist era when meat was an accepted part of Hinduism. Back to the resolutions.. you'd have to have been living in a cave this past year not to have bee...

The first time I made this recipe, my Iphone 6 was still halfway through its 2 year contract, and the only container available to stash it away was nowhere near photogenic. And perhaps, there was a sliver of uncertainty whether I wanted to post the recipe without giving it a second shot (which wasn't going to happen until I finished off the first batch). Nevertheless I faithfully recorded the proportions on my laptop, and let the whole recipe slip back to the recesses of my memory centers. The first batch got polished off soon enough, mainly by my other half  'G', who seemed to absolutely love it with fresh hot plain rice drizzled with sesame oil. Chutney powders by definition, tend to be 'reserves' in a 'Tambrahm' home (as opposed to Telugu households where they are a mainstay), and needless to say, the relatively extended storage period gave me an idea about how long I could store the powdered blend at room temperature - and yes, I'm a scientist b...

I'm not sure how a food related 'Jiminy Cricket' conscience would look like in real life but imagination tells me it would be brandishing a wooden ladle for sure and would probably speak to me in my mother's voice. Admonishing me for not keeping up on my writing for my blog posts (I realize that is my weak link) I seem to be quite happy creating recipes and  Instagramming  them daily. A sudden shuffling of photographs & backing up (for fear of the new worm virus crossing the net) suddenly put me into a shocked gasp mode.. (I have about 1/2 a terabytes of just photographs, of creative ideas that never made it past the hard drive, leave alone minor editing to tweak the images), ideas that were forgotten half way and never revisited again, only to flood my brain with taste and olfactory memories - which are superbly forceful when they come gushing back - and I realized that  I'm in need of serious organization in terms of my laptop. It will be a work in prog...

This was an experiment done on a wing and a prayer, tried to satiate my deep craving for 'kadugu mangai' (baby mangoes in a mustard brine), a classic South Indian pickle that is a staple in my kitchen. Up until this year, these baby mangoes were simply unavailable. Sooo, instead of the mangoes, I decided to look outside the crisper drawer and before I knew it, I was stuffing an entire head of Napa cabbage liberally sprinkled with kosher salt and turmeric into a large glass jar. A month later, poured out the brine, combined it with raw mustard seeds, asafetida and arbol chiles, and gave it a whirl in the smoothie blender. The net result, a delicious kimchi (a tad salty though), that paired well with the tambrahm favorite - Yogurt rice!

T'was just another Summer afternoon, The kids were home for the summer holidays, getting bored, there's only so much summer reading you can force them to do, and the Indian mommy in me could no longer caution them against going out in the afternoon  (I've solemnly refused to use that horrid excuse of 'You'll get a dark tan if you stay out in the mid day sun'), and so we decided to head out to Terhune orchards for the blueberry picking. The kids never say no to outings to the orchard, they LOVE the trip there, the cute yellow dogs and the cats,  the chocolate crinkle and Snickerdoodle cookies, and they positively trip over grabbing buckets and heading joyfully towards the berry bushes... ... And there it ends, the younger one loses herself in her delightful imaginary worlds where she probably thinks she's hacking her way through virgin Amazon jungle, sighing at every branch that brushes against her legs, picks 2 or 3 berries as if they were a new as ...

One definite advantage of not being a W.A.S.P (White Anglo Saxon Protestant) and claiming origins from a former third world country is that you get to celebrate almost  everything twice. Two names, Two Birthdays (one on the official date you were born, the one that you register at school with, the other, your star birthday, which is calculated according to the Hindu Calendar ), and festivities of cultures from the mother land & adopted home. Who says life can't be a string of events to celebrate? And so, today was New Years, the religious one. As with many of the different communities in India, New Years is celebrated in April, which was the case with the Western world until some pompous  Roman figurehead decided that the New Year should begin in the middle of the freezing winter. (and gave us April Fool's day as a rather lame substitute). This day is venerated as Bihu in Assam, Baisakhi in Punjab, Poila Baisakh / nabobarsho in Bengal, Vishu  in Kerala and Varsha...

 Got your attention with that sacrilegious sounding title on this post, didn't I? Well, I'm as spiritual as the next person out there, and never in my life will I ever commit that variety of Blasphemy, so nothing to fret about. I still wonder why these curious looking citrus entities (other than the obvious visual reason) were called such. It turns out that these fruits are used as a religious offering to the Buddha. My neighboring Whole Foods Market (which is quite some distance away, in Princeton) had a stock of these weird looking citrus and I must have been the oddball customer who immediately went cuckoo on spotting them. Since I had never seen one before, I immediately went for the biggest fruit with the most tentacles (since they were sold as individual units rather than by weight) The first three 'tentacles' were peeled off for their zest, dried in the oven and went into making a citrus salt for my Food52 Secret Santa .     Making ...

Last year at this time, I  bought (and fell head over heels in love with the idea of) a bushel of tomatoes (in two batches of about 25 lbs each). At this time of the year , my local farm sells these gorgeous plum tomatoes by the bushel,

Whats it about having a whale of a time with friends & Family?. It makes it so hard to get back to food.  While I wait for my local farm to open up their fresh vegetable stand (June 23rd), Its back to trying small dishes, amuse bouches as Le Francais call them.

 Produce wise, I have no complaints about the past 12 months. Seasonal local vegetables from Hillsborough farm throughout the summer and a wonderful time exploring citrus varieties after that. My  clear favorite was the Mayer lemon. I simply fell in love with its vivid color, fragrance and sweet/tart taste. The best priced ones were from Whole Foods, priced at a modest 3.49 /lb (about 6-7 lemons). Indulged in making 'achar', preserved lemon, Lemon rice, margaritas & a dozen bottles of marmalade! (this was in addition to a community pick testing for Food52 , a fragrant Five-citrus marmalade.

Yeah OK, we're at the end of pumpkin season, waiting anxiously for that yoda like rodent, that prognosticating groundhog from Gobbler's Knob, Punxsutawney, PA to announce to the world about when spring 2012 will be here (sheesh!, the best weather predicting satellites & software & we still defer to the groundhog!). Well, as long as the cold weather is here, we'll be making do with potatoes, pumpkins, and greens from the Brassica family such as cabbage, cauliflower & kale, not there is anything to complain. In fact, personally, I could live on potatoes alone! Having said that, the topic of food waste still buzzes within the cranium and a pumpkin is one example of multiple components of the vegetable used up. The flesh needs no introduction, its baked, roasted boiled & pureed (thats 4 potential recipes for the future right there), the toasted seeds are used for stadium snacks, an aromatic gourmet oil & in granolas & topped over muffins. All that i...