Panfusine

Ever heard of this joke? Wife: I bought a spoon today & they gave me a 4 place dinner set for free!! Husband: Really?? that's great.. & how much did the spoon cost? Wife: $ 249.99... Lets face it, all of us have sneaky stories like these that we will never share, (or .. we may brag about it on FB assuming that the ones closest to us will not notice). Well on a foodie note, yesterdays healthy light salad lunch was kind of built up on those lines. I remember an episode of last seasons 'The next food network star' which catapulted Aarti Sequeira to Food network stardom and brought in a much needed Indian influence to the channel, one of the episodes featured a dish which called for pomegranate molasses . Now Indian cuisine puts the hallowed pomegranate to full use in the form of anardaana,  the dried version, and its powdered form, but one seldom sees it being used as a thick syrup in Indian cuisine. OK.. the word molasses conjures up the image of somethi...

Sometimes, all you seek is good ol' vanilla ice cream... or strawberry jam over toast. My other half is convinced that I'm on the path to make my five year old into a chef... he already is a foodie with a sharp sense of taste and aroma. Last friday, he was a very happy boy when I made him this fabulous Feta, pine nut & mint pesto   by coffeefoodwritergirl that was posted on Food52. with a little necessary tweaking , (the Pine nuts that I got were labeled 'chilgoza' from the Indian store, were probably harvested last century, they tasted quite old!, so)  necessity being the mother of invention, and my teensy greed for a spectacularly green pesto, I made do with some handy pistachio. & yes, my pepper grinder was nowhere to be seen either (I suspect, it will surface under the entertainment cabinet tomorrow, courtesy my 2 year old, who seems to be on a mission to transfer the entire contents of my kitchen to the 'green pillow' room (a.k.a the fami...

(Linking this post to the Dec 10th 2011 Terra Madre event hosted by Pritya Books) Memories of my mother making this exquisite snack abound. She'd whip it up as a treat hoping to surprise me after I woke up from my afternoon nap as a child, but somehow the hum from the coffee grinder always ensured that I'd be up & awake to watch her making it., she'd freshly powder the special garbanzo flour, followed by the sugar & cardamom, melt the ghee & simultaneously toast a generous handful of broken cashews as it melted. She would then combine the sugar, flour, cashews and the hot ghee, and immediately scoop up a fistful of the scalding hot mixture to shape into a ball, There would be a momentary wince of pain flashing across her eyes as she laid down this glorious cream colored ping pong ball of pure love on a plate. When I asked her why she had to go through the pain of making it, her answer would always be, "it transfers my love ont...

I had made this pie last year during thanksgiving, but it never saw the light of day on this blog, Well, what better time than the 4th of July!  Thanks Ria Mary Matthew & Shauna Ahern for this fabulous opportunity to be a part of the 'Pie Party' event. The term apple pie tends to elicit memories of the Cooks Source plagiarism brouhaha from last year & not very positive ones at that. The take home message of that incident is that, irrespective of the simplicity of any recipe that may be posted on the blogosphere & elsewhere, it seems just the right thing & way more simpler to give credit where due. This is my very first foray into baking from scratch, I've tried making pies with puff pastry & graham cracker crusts, but one really does not get complete satisfaction knowing that there was a component in your dish that you've no clue about. & at the end of the day, while I made up a batch of pie dough I had to scrap the idea of...

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 ...

Image Credit: Monicabhide.com  This exercise may remind you of that memorable scene from the  movie 'A time to Kill' but bear with me.. Close your eyes & picture yourself as a child visiting a friends house for tea. Try to think of something that your friends mom served that was so delicious & mouthwatering, something you never had at home. A  taste so unforgettable, you longed for the time you could enjoy that treat again.. just let yourself swim in those memories.... ' SNAP OUT OF IT'! Question:   During this self imposed daydream, did it ever matter to you which part of the country your friend was from? Did you care if the food served was Tamil, or Gujrati, or Bengali or....? (applies to readers who grew up in India) All that stood out was that it was unforgettably delicious. At that moment of time, the food being analyzed by your taste buds & nose was for all practical purposes, just Indian.  Even as we chafe under the (partially true) ...

Aah summer... one week into the 80 F weather & I'm already complaining about it! Having said that, the heat is simple one of the many many aspects of what characterizes summer. Summer is the time for vacations. Growing up in India, It meant making good on those railway reservations that fathers had made in early march, (I'm NOT getting into the inefficiencies of the Indian Railways in the 1970's..), or if you were one of those privileged, yet solidly middle class kids like me..taking your chances on the 'subject to load' staff passes that Air India generously offered its employees. For about 4 hours, you were pretty much pampered in luxury, beginning with the 'maharaja' lounges at the airports (accessible to managerial executives with business class privileges) where they'd start the feeding process with finger foods such as cream cheese sandwiches with chutney, tiny samosas & those delicious savory  puff pastries..IF & ONLY IF there wer...