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!

I have a dear friend from school who lives in the City of Kolhapur in Maharashtra. When I visited her  at the  gorgeous heritage resort  she owns there en route to a holiday in Goa, she gifted me with a spice blend that I treasured to the last speck. It sat  at the bottom of my freezer and was doled out for special dishes just like Saffron is rationed out in many Indian homes. Its a lip smacking flaming  hot blend of onions, garlic and the famed Kolhapuri Mirch (red chili). I marinaded cauliflower florets in a paste of this spice blend , salt and oil, and roasted it in a 450 F oven. Finished with a handful of green coriander berries, this was a fabulous treat paired with roomali roti.

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 ...

This is a family recipe that owes its origin to my paternal Grandmother, who was an amazing culinary queen.  Her attention to detail and stickler for perfection is something I'll never be able to match. This dish doesn't have a name, we've just always called it 'Amma Subzi'. This particular stew includes a paste of coconut, coriander and dal, its very 'south Indian' in flavor and yet, when paired with plain roti, its a match made in food paradise.

My kid loves Seitan / Wheat gluten in his bowl of Thai green curry, until a couple of months ago he just happened to read the list of ingredients, replete with a cornucopia of preservatives that positively made him gag. After a couple of Seitan deprived green curries, he mustered up the courage to suggest that we make our own, and I had no clue about how to execute on that request, except that one needed Wheat gluten. That I had plenty of , a couple of boxes to be precise and they even had directions. In the next half hour, I had this stretchy mass of protein all set to be grilled. and a Iphone shot even had some of my Instagram buddies wondering when I'd started making Chicken at home.

Ever wonder what happens to the  scraps & dregs left behind after freshly churned ice cream or sorbet is transferred to a container and allowed to claim its place in the freezer. In real life I take a silicone spatula and scrape every extra bit from the frozen ice cream bowl, no tossing it into the sink to get washed and cleaned up. that kind of waste is OK for the small screen, I'm brazen enough to say that I'm capable of licking the bowl clean, but will not because I do not want to rip out my taste buds. I'd posted the strawberry sorbet recipe yesterday and got about a quarter cup of extra puree that wouldn't fit in the freezer, and plus, it had melted down by the time I was done. So that evening, it was a fabulous cocktail made with this very leftover. A tablespoon of  Strawberry kumquat puree , topped up with chilled Brut (dry) Sparkling wine / Champagne. Cheers!

Fresh strawberries personally handpicked, the inherent pride ensures that you want to showcase the berries at their purest. This recipe is nothing short of genius, and is included as part of Kirsten Miglore's book 'Genius recipes' . I did play around with the ingredients. Instead of using lemons, I preferred kumquats (cut and de seeded). Here's the link to the recipe,  use a cup of de seeded kumquats instead of the 2 - 3 lemons for this particular version.

I have lettuce and curly mustard growing sporadically on my back lawn and at some point of time really felt that I should use it in food, since my yard is completely pesticide free. there was a mix of spinach, chard, sorrel, curly mustard and lettuce. Sauteed the Green Black eyed peas (I know it sounds like a color clash, doesn't it?) with sliced onions along with some plain garam masala. Then steamed the greens, pureed it and stir fried it into some cooked rice along with spiced Green black eyed peas. The end result? an incredibly flavorful lunch offering. straight up from Nature.

My 7 year old's most favorite food in the world is a simple broth seasoned with cumin, coriander, curry leaves and tomato. I expressly hesitate calling this 'Rasam' as refers to the traditional South Indian dish, since this was a quick hack version I could whip up in the time it takes to boil water. I add ingredients as I go along if they're within reach, slivers of ginger on one day, crushed peppercorns on some days, a couple of cherry tomatoes. but the barebones recipe is always the same: a mix of cumin, coriander, tuvar dal and arbol chiles prepared every week and left in the coffee grinder. just add it to water, a knob of tamarind , tomato paste, salt, turmeric and a pinch of asafetida. I love adding readymade rice noodles to the mix similar to a Pho, My kid prefers rice.

I doubt whether I've ever had a vending cart lunch that was so sublimely delicious. you may expect this in every street corner in Indian cities, but this is the Big Apple, A.k.a New York city I'm referring to, and right in the heart of the campus of my Alma Mater NYU. The NY dosa vending cart is operated by  Mr. Thiru Kumar , A Sri Lankan Chef right in the middle of Washington square Park, The menu items are simple - Dosa or Uthappams, with multiple variations. The quality of the dishes is amazing, the dosas are perfect, not a spot of extra oil, the right amount of crispness yielding to a mild flavorful potato filling mixed with dry coconut chutney and a mix of fresh greens, bell peppers and carrots. Truly a comfort treat in the middle of Manhattan. I'm going to stop at this point since I'm on the verge of drooling over the laptop and  refer you to this article for further details!

Summer time is Salad time.. and I''m not a fan of putting salads together, or maybe I like the way it sounds being called a 'Salsa' (invokes savory spicy visions) I made this over a year ago, and it qualifies enough to be called semi home made, canned corn & beans, with fresh avocado mashed in. spiced with finely minced green chilies, shallots, cilantro & lime.

Whenever the craving strikes for deep fried food, I always try and maximize by trying out new ingredients to fry up, and whatever is sitting in my pantry/ fridge is fair game. This time around it was Fava beans freshly shucked from the pod, mixed with a chickpea batter infused generously with fresh thyme, and fried up.

Pulling out one of my older recipes I'd posted on Food 52 (shoring up all the dishes I made in June for July  posts! This dry chutney is a staple condiment for classic Indian street foods like Vada Pao, & bhajias (tempura made with almost any vegetatable coated with a spiced chickpea batter . 2 tablespoons shredded fresh coconut (OR) 2 tablespoons dessicated coconut 1/4-1/2 teaspoon Cayenne pepper powder 1 teaspoon Aleppo pepper flakes 1 clove garlic Sea Salt to taste In a Mortar, combine all the ingredients & pound till the garlic has completely been minced & incorporated into the powder.

This recipe was all over the news yesterday, thanks to  BBC . a recipe recreated from remnants of food found in pot shards at Farmana in Harappa. Using spices common 3000 years ago on the Indian sub continent. The original called for cumin, which wasn't part of Indian cuisine up until the 3 rd century AD (it was a Mediterranean influence, brought in by Phoenician traders). I replaced the cumin with long pepper (aka Thippili / pippili). and used thin baby eggplants similar to the Japapnese eggplants that are more common to the region rather than the regular ones available in the market. The dis is simple to make. make a paste of fresh ginger, fresh turmeric and long pepper, saute it with sesame oil, add salt and the eggplants. Cover to cook. add grated green mango when the eggplants are halfway cooked. Finish with a garnish of holy basil. I served it up with a traditional pongal.

Pomegranates are out of season in Summer, just when they are most needed to fill that niche of colorful, delicious and healthy salad ingredients. But then currants fill in that niche beautifully, ruby like spherical pearls, they're perfect for this traditional South Indian Kosmalli/Koshimbir salad. Sweet tart and bursting with Juicy flavor.

Given that Jackfruits are by definition such huge specimens and it takes a labor of love to prep them, It only makes sense that one tends to want to use up every bit of the fruit. The matted fibers in between the arils are rather inedible and tough. That leaves the seeds. They have a texture and flavor similar to chestnuts and they're traditionally roasted or cooked into stews. This particular version has the jack-fruit seeds boiled with turmeric and then cooked down with a spice blend consisting of fresh coconut, cumin and arbol chiles. Finished off with a seasoning of tempered mustard seeds and curry leaves.  

Around the time that I was on a high after discovering whole Jackfruits for sale at my local Whole Foods, I also discovered a tiny grocery / cafe in my neck of the woods that stocked up on Mexican foods & ingredients, Armed with a BIG bag of Corn husks and cornmeal readily on hand. Whats a girl to do? Make Jackfruit tamales of course. As nonchalant as this sounds, I don't think these ingredients have been combined together. The recipe is accurately written down in my little notebook and plenty of photographs clicked, so I guess this is a teaser/trailer for a recipe to be posted on the main blog.