Carrot Almond Halwa

Sometimes it is only a mental block that keeps me from trying recipe variations. For instance, I am so accustomed to dairy-based Indian desserts that wrapping my head around vegan Indian desserts can befuddle me. A few years ago, I cooked lunch for a group of vegan guests. The appetizers, main dishes, salads and sides all were a breeze but I tripped up while planning dessert and  resignedly

Blog Bites #2: The Copycat Edition

The first edition of Blog Bites was fun for me, but before we get to the round-up of last month, here's the theme for the next round:


Blog Bites #2 is the Copycat Edition!


The idea is quite simple. Think of some food or beverage that you enjoy but have never made at home. It could be something you enjoyed at a restaurant, on vacation, at someone else's home, at a catered event like a wedding,

The Singing Chef's in my Kitchen

Thanks to everyone who played along in the guessing game at the end of my last post. There were several guesses along the lines of edible stuff as one might expect to see in a cooking pot, including noodles, sevai, vermicelli, spaghetti squash and sev for falooda, which is one thing I really wish I was making!

Milli was the first to guess the correct answer, which is that I was dyeing wool in

Dal Fry Under Pressure

As in many Indian kitchens, my kitchen is presided over by a large and noisy beast- my pressure cooker. If there is one appliance that will pay for itself many times over in terms of time, energy and money savings, this is it.

Walking around typical neighborhoods in India around 11 AM in the morning, it is common to hear hissing, shrieking and whistling noises made not by people but by pressure

Ven Pongal and Eggplant Gothsu

Blog hopping in search of new and interesting rice cooker recipes, I stumbled on this rice cooker ven pongal from Sukanya's blog. What an enticing picture it is- definitely the sort of recipe that makes you want to run to the kitchen and cook it right after you have tried pawing at the screen. Which is exactly what I did last night, the cooking, not the pawing at the screen.

Yes, ven pongal (a

Date Tamarind Chutney and Aloo Tikki Chana Chaat

Whew, that's a mouthful of a post title. But a tasty mouthful, I promise you.

Over my decade-long stint as a home cook, there are several things for which I have made the journey from home-made to store-bought and back full circle to home-made. The sweet and tangy date-tamarind chutney is one of these. It is one of the first things I learned to make from scratch, in Bombay. Once I was running my

Black Bean Pumpkin Soup

Sometimes, a little vegetable goes a long way. I bought a modest wedge of pumpkin last Saturday, and sweet and nutrition dense as it is, it fed us three times over- I used a third of the wedge for pumpkin kaap (made the same way as these but using pumpkin slices instead of eggplant), a third for the excellent pumpkin dhansak from Nandita's blog, and the last portion for this soup.

The inky,

Rice Cooker Upma

I was weighing the pros and cons of buying a rice cooker and did the sensible thing- I asked my wise readers to weigh in. My tiny kitchen space necessitates that all appliances go through a lengthy vetting process before being allowed in. When I asked about rice cookers, I was rewarded with dozens of great suggestions via comments and e-mails. The Cooker wrote in to say that you can make

Back to Basics: Eggplant and Potato

"But is it blog-worthy?"

This is a question that I seem to ask myself quite often. Some of my favorites never make it to these pages because they seem too simple, somehow. Like this homely eggplant potato bhaaji (subzi, a combination of a braise and stir-fry) that I made last night. But these are the recipes I keep returning to, that I have made so often that I can cook them on auto-pilot, and