Meanwhile the cooking area is as busy as it could be. And why not ? It’s the much awaited community dinner and uncles and aunties have all joined to ensure the feast is supreme. And what an eclectic menu is it !! Koraishutir kochuri. To be accompanied with a wicked aloor dom. White rice. Dal. And Maach bhaja. The fish had been hauled up just this morning from the community pukur. And the piece de resistance. An irresistible hansher mangsho bhuna. With a delectable Chita ruti to mop up all that delectable gravy ..read more

The maacher baajar in our sleepy town is nothing to write home about. A row of make-shift decrepit stalls, canopied by hole-riddled blue plastic sheets, attempted to be held in place by four rickety bamboo poles at the four corners. On an elevated pockmarked pedestal, is seated the owner of the stall, confident, almost imperious, sporting a luxuriant moustache and a makeshift fly-whisk, a long stick at the end of which is attached what looks like a handkerchief that has lived its life ..read more

S proceeded to add a dash of what looked to be a wicked chilli paste to the rice, followed by a touch of the ginger-scallion sauce and gave it a hearty mix. Try. He suggested. The rice. A slice of the chicken. And a spoon of the broth. A diffident bite. An indifferent slurp. A pause. Is this for real ? My first words to S. Once I had recovered. He smiled. And that was my first brush with Hainanese chicken and rice ..read more

The bel tree was not my favourite tree in Grandmas backyard. Well, far from it. And there was ample reason for that. Dada, full of naughty mischief, had one lazy afternoon, narrated to me how he had seen a ghost on the bel tree one new moon night. When ominous nimbus clouds had blotted out the silver moon and the twinkling stars. And there was she, he animatedly described, an old lady with a toothy grin and a cascade of silver hair, draped in a white saree with a broad crimson border, sitting on that branch of the bel tree and dangling her legs ..read more

  Sunday is bliss. Lazy let’s-snooze-once-more mornings. Idle time-stops-still evenings. Out of turn siestas. Teas, Coffees and Conversations. Taking in that heady smell of the pages of a new book that has just arrived by post. Unwrapping that CD thats waited long to be played. Staring at the twilight sky. Feeling the rain on the face. Going back to childhood. Letting nostalgia reign. And what better way to jazz up the evening with this sinful and piping hot straight-out-of-the-kadai mishtir dokaner singara and cuppas of masala chai ..read more

Fast forward by a good decade or two. We are on vacation and a pale green inviting dessert on the breakfast counter catches my eye. Brushing aside the momentary guilt pang of going (yet again) for sugars during breakfast (I had pledged to abstain from sugars), I go for it. The cruel knife carves a slice. A bite. And the dessert that was foreign just a moment ago all of a sudden feels very very familiar. A patishapta, I squeal in delight. And u know what, they have used payeshpata in the crepe. S smiles. The patishapta that we Bengalis adore is Payeshpatar Patishapta or Kuih Dadar (the Chef ha ..read more

Over the next decade or so, every time the man travelled to Singapore, he would unfailingly find an opportunity to relish his fish head curry. It almost became a Singapore ritual, one without which a trip to the city of Raffles and Merlion was deemed not complete. Almost every Indian eatery had its own version, most were hits, some were misses, I learnt over time. But the best, S loved to recount, had to be the one they made in The Banana Leaf Apolo restaurant in Little India. It’s no surprise then, that The Banana Leaf Apolo restaurant proudly featured on the top of my unabashedly long list ..read more

The pot of milk, battered with age and use, sits on the stove, a low flame providing the needed warmth. I brew myself a Darjeeling and patiently wait as the milk reduces, stirring just occasionally. Two Darjeelings and a call later, the luscious, macerated litchis go into the milk. I get the pot off the stove and cover it with a lid. More wait, as the coddled fruits gently release their flavour into the reduced milk. And finally it is ready ..read more

The rest of the morning goes by, working on the unnervingly long to-do lists, timelines and dependencies, adding to the list, editing line items and scratching off that rare one that possibly can be deferred beyond. I am shaken out of my stupor by the shrill of the doorbell. Takes me a moment to return to the present. Must be the bread delivery person ..read more