Panfusine

Holi hai - 'Its Holi' runs the refrain this time of year when merriment and revelry break loose with he advent of spring. when travel brochures describe it as a 'riot of color' you could take it literally. THe festival is riotous, the normal 'distance' between the genders is blurred, sometimes for the worse. There was a rather powerful tweet out there yesterday suggesting that Holi would be a perfect occasion to teach kids accept 'NO' for an answer, something the average male Indian population seems all to often to require a refresher in. From the mythological point of view, Holi celebrates the rather fiery end of a demoness called Holika. Holika was the sister of the asura Hiranyakashipu, whose son was a devotee of Lord Vishnu. Hiranyakaship hated Vishnu with such a passion that he later found refuge at the feet of the Lord, simply because of his perverted reverse obsession. Similar to what the Abrahamic texts sometimes indicate about Lucifer, the f...

When it comes to new kitchen gadgets, I make no bones of it, I have a weakness. I love them, some fall by the wayside ass I fall out, and with some, its an enduring relationship as I depend upon them for my daily cooking. I's not often that I get to extol about kitchen gadgets used in daily cooking, because this blog is not about what I cook daily for my family (although my Instagram feed does take care of that). Oxo's latest product campaign just upped the ante in the utility category and I ended up using the products on a regular basis before the recipe actually became a reality. The package arrived with a colander bowl, a hand held mandoline and a grape/tomato cutter. Since rice is a daily staple, I put the rice & grain  colander to full use from day one. the perforations on the gadgets are small enough to hold in the tiniest of seeds such as quinoa and the wining feature is the perforations added on the pouring spout that drains of residual water with a...

Anyone from Mumbai (the city formerly known as Bombay), with a passion for its incomparable street food will relate to the following scenario. Standing in front of a vendors cart waiting for a fresh batch of Batata vadas (garlicky potatoes enrobed in a spiced chickpea flour batter) to be fished out of a huge wok of hot oil, there is an aroma that quietly stamps itself into your memory. Rustic, yeasty and downright comforting. The stacks of  country rolls piled up 2 feet high, in the corner. These are the native 'Ladi Pav', a Portuguese contribution to this vibrant culinary scenario. The Pav is everything that the snooty slice of white bread is not -  tough, chewy, with a tang that is halfway to sourdough. Its usually partially sliced,  soaked in melted butter when served up with Pav bhaji or Usal. Alternatively, dusted liberally with garlic chutney with a golden orb of batata vada stuffed in between. Lets not beat around the bush, the Pav has always been looke...

There's a certain condiment I always make sure I stock up on when visiting India. Its almost practically unheard of outside the Southern states and in cities like Mumbai, you get it at the South Indian provision stores. Four little ping-pong shaped spheres wrapped in cellophane and bound with two mismatched rubber-bands. Vepillakatti - an oxymoron of a term akin to pineapple (neither pine nor apple & yet its called a pineapple ?)  Vepillakatti when translated from its native Tamil / Malayalam basically consists of two terms -'Vepillai', a.k.a Neem leaf, and 'Katti' - lump. This condiment thankfully does not involve anything remotely related to Neem. As for the lumpy part, yes its initially measured and shaped out into little spheres, which is then crumbled at the first morsel you add to your food. The key, and I mean absolutely critical ingredient in this condiment is fresh lime leaves, preferably fresh picked off the tree so that it retains all its w...

The New Year's here and that of course means that the festive finale of the previous year comes to a grinding halt. The Christmas tree is cleared of its ornaments, the ornaments are wrapped up, and stashed back into the big storage boxes, and said storage boxes are then dragged back down to the basement to hibernate until next December. In most households this definitely means a lull in the happy mood that prevails, the sinking feeling of nothing to celebrate until the weather warms up, and of course, the snowstorms and  bitter cold weather that inevitably marks February. And no, a corporate invented festival like Valentine's day does not count. In Indian homes, we just get ready to celebrate the next celestial event that makes its turn, In this case, the return of the sun to the northern Hemisphere, known as 'Uttarayan' in Sanskrit. every state and community has its own way of celebrating the impending arrival of spring / hot weather (for all practical purpo...

Inspiration comes from the most unexpected of sources, it's up to the individual to use and interpret the signal and filter it from the surrounding noise. Call it signal processing or an interpretation of the Bhagvad Geeta or simply neural transmission and the brain processing the sounds it hears and making sense of it. you know its a winner of an idea if something constructive comes of it. Yesterday, it was a random babble session with my 6 year old, she came up to me insisting that we had to make some coconut popcorn -  when I asked her who told her that she invoked a character from Jake and the Neverland Pirates. It seemed such a cute conversation that I shared it simultaneously on Facebook. I was rather clueless about what she wanted, since her palate is extremely restricted, Rice and Pasta to be precise. And sure enough, my friends rallied with possible interpretations. Knowing how much my kid does NOT care for anything sweet that I make (told you she keeps me groun...