Tomorrow is Holi which means it's also the time for the original Indian milkshake - the thandai. The drink marks our transition from spring to summer. With poppy seeds and melon seeds and a whole lot of nuts and spices, the end result is meant to have a cooling effect. There are many fans of the original thandai but I've never been a fan - mostly, the colour and flavour of saffron never sits right with me. So this year for holi, I'm shaking things up a bit. This version has most of the traditional thandai ingredients except I got rid of saffron. And I added two blue ingredients: blue poppy se ..read more

  It's been a couple of years since I added a new post here. Covid wasn't the only culprit. Blogging's just not as much fun as it used to be. Today's bloggers are serious professionals, not the fumbling hobbyists of my time just making friends and bonding over food. But the two years I wasn't blogging, I found myself coming back to visit, to look up my own recipes. The blog has, over last so many years, become the equivalent of my personal recipe diary. So I'm back! Maybe there will be more posts and maybe there won't. But I made these awesome waffles and I needed a place to stash the r ..read more

I first heard of Momofuku not in the context of their legendary ramen or fried chicken but because I was intrigued by cereal milk. One of the outposts of the group is Milk Bar where, with Christina Tosi at helm, they dish out desserts that are straight out of a kindergartener's dream. There are many, many good things about Milk Bar but none as good or as intriguing as cereal milk. Think of that little bit of milk that's left at the end of your breakfast, infused with the flavour of cornflakes and sugar that you just ate. That's what cereal milk is, and at Milk Bar they sell whole cartons o ..read more

There are many things I don't buy; cakes are softer and cookies more buttery when you bake them yourself. But I had a fear - possibly because of a failed batch years ago - that homemade crackers won't be as crisp and as nice as store bought ones. Fear no more. These rye crackers beat anything I have ever eaten or bought. Plus there is the added advantage of eating them warm, right out of the oven. I only made these because snack shops are closed and I had run out of things to dip in my hummus but these are good enough to make every time you have a hankering for something crisp. Super easy ..read more

In the last month, the world seems to have gone crazy around us. Not only has coronavirus created an unprecedented health emergency, it is causing us to relook at our lifestyle and life choices like never before. Most people I know are working from home and because I live in Mumbai and work out of a startup hub, I am getting increasingly aware of another kind of panic gripping my friends and colleagues. If you are feeling like eating out puts you at risk and you have never cooked before, chances are you are scratching your head right now on what to eat for dinner. I know of some fine folk ..read more

What do an electrical engineer, a monk and an IT trainer have in common? These are all the things Abhilash was before he turned his attention to bread baking. Not the one to pick an easy path, Abhilash started with the most temperamental of breads - the sourdough - as his baking adventure. At first, he was baking these loaves for himself. Accolades from friends and family quickly followed and much to the delight of this writer, he turned his passion into a full time career six months back. For the uninitiated, a sourdough bread is made by fermenting the dough with naturally occurring yeas ..read more

This polenta is like a hug in a bowl. Coarse cornmeal cooked until creamy and then topped with cheese, honey and mint, this dish is as perfect for breakfast as it is for a lunch or a lazy dinner. What I like best though is that the porridge present a perfectly blank canvas for other flavours. On other days, I've topped polenta with a creamy mushroom sauce. Once, I felt fancy and set the polenta in a tray and cut it into dainty squares that were topped with whipped feta and caramelised onions. What's most important though is that base. Polenta can very easily go wrong so here's my tips ..read more

Have you heard of ruby chocolate? Up until 2017, chocolate used to be brown, dark brown or white. Then Callebaut came up with another colour: ruby chocolate is naturally pink. I first tasted Ruby last year at London's Fortnum and Mason and was instantly taken in by the unique flavour. It's sweet like white chocolate but there is a lingering sourness, a light tang that sets it apart. Ruby chocolate has become easier to get hold of in Mumbai now so after I had my fill of the chocolate in its natural form for a few months, I turned to what else I could do with it. The first recipe to cross m ..read more

I love baking Plain Jane cakes. The ones you can whip up quickly in a bowl and the ones where you do not need to fuss about frostings and such. I specially like the kinds you can bake on a weekend and leave in the fridge to snack on during the week. The brown butter banana cake from food52 checks all the boxes. As an added bonus, there is no need to even bring out a whip; you only need a blender or a food processor. The original recipe is for a loaf cake but I adapted mine to fit a 6 inch springform pan. If you are comparing recipes, you will notice that my cake recipe is halved but I kep ..read more

I've been on bit of a Thai food kick this past month. Which means that the fridge is also chockfull of Thai ingredients. So I started to think what else I could do with them. Which means there have been a few experiments. Here's the most successful of them thus far: a kaffir lime rasam. As far as fusion foods go, this isn't too much of a stretch. Lime rasam is already a thing and kaffir lime adds a lovely new dimension to flavour and fragrance of this rasam. Here's the recipe. Ingredients 2 tbsp arhar dal 4-5 kaffir lime leaves 1/2 tsp salt pinch of turmeric powder 1 tsp sesame oil 1 tsp ..read more