Panfusine

Its the 24th of the month again, which means that its time for the 'We knead to bake' post. Aparna had given the group the choice to bake whatever we chose to and I turned to Food52 for inspiration. Zeroed in on a Hazelnut and cherry bread and ordered a banetton and some other things I'd been saving up for, from their Provisions store. (I love their curated set of products. Its like all the goodies you want in one spot without having to sift through hundreds of other similar products.). Provisions adds these gorgeous stamped postcards for sending to friends. the only problem is that they're so gorgeous, that I tend to collect & HOARD them! I can't tell you how much I've learned from Food52. Recipes are just one part of it. The amount of information and details about various cuisines, techniques & ingredients, its a gold mine. Getting back to the topic on hand, the copy of Amanda Hesser's book 'Cooking for Mr. Latte' that I or...

My initial idea was to call this post 'Eating your mistakes' but it turned out to be such a delicious deviation of intended results, I just did not have the heart to tag it as such. It started out with the intention of making a beloved bengali dessert the 'Sandesh'. My memory cells are pretty much swamped by gustatory inputs about classics like 'Rosgolla' & Cham Cham, that I do not have many memories about the third in the triumverate of Bengali sweets. So I turned to a classic bengali food blog, The Bong Moms cookbook and sure enough, came across this elegant recipe for bhappa sandesh . Scrolling down the list of ingredients, mentally 'checking' off the ones I had on hand...Ricotta, condensed milk (check & check... YAAY I was on a roll here) & I flew off to try this out, entirely forgetting the remaining list of ingredients which I did not have on hand, or a serious look at the simple technique described. That was the end of the Sandes...

This occurred sometime in the period between 1910-1920 somewhere in the heartland of Tinneveli district (present day Tirunelveli) in South India. Chembulingam Nadar was a notorious bandit who had gained a cult status as a robin hood like figure. Driven to a life of crime after  tragically losing his wife in a feudal skirmish, he had made it his mission in life to rob from the rich and give to the poor. He still held his standards of gallantry though, never killing women & children, instead pinning their ears together with a lock through their earlobes. No such guarantees for the menfolk, who were at the mercy of his flintlock revolver. His reputation was such that he would apparently send out an advance notice to the house he intended to loot and sure enough, with clockwork precision, strike at the appointed hour. His turf extended from the Western Ghats all the way to Travancore (Present day Thiruvithamgoor in Kerala). In a sense, his threat was the equivalent of the ...