Misery loves company and so does tea. As much as I love tea, truth is that more than half of the fried snacks in India are had along with tea. If we quit tea for a month, my guess is that each of us will lose at least 3-4 lbs. weight. But then, giving up on the “Elixir of Social Life”, is it really worth it? [Read on…]
No occasion in North India is complete without Kheer. It is one of the most original and ancient Indian dessert. Also one of the most delicious too. If you do not like kheer for some reason, I can bet you haven’t eaten a good one yet. As easy and simple as it is to make Kheer, it is equally easy to make a mediocre one too. [Read on…]
All my childhood, on Raksha Bandhan, there was only one sweet that came to our house. It was also one of the very few store-bought sweet that dared to enter our household. It was Samosa house’s special spongy Rasgulla. I have not eaten better Spongy Rasgulla (s) than those. Small, white, sugar soaked balls of Paneer that you could squeeze all the way through and they would not fall apart. Put them back in the syrup and they would puff right back up. Such was their popularity that all our relatives in Delhi asked for them when we would visit them. [Read on…]
I’ve had quite a few awesome Kulfis in my lifetime up till now but the fondest memory I have of it is when we visited my grandparents to their village in Rajasthan. There was this old man who would go around the village in the evening time on his bicycle with an aluminum box tied to its back. He would yell “Kulfi” “Kulfi” to lure the kids out of their homes as if kids didn’t already wait for him at the door. And one fine day, we convinced our grandfather to let us taste his kulfi. When the man took that long, thin, rocket shaped kulfi out of that box, I had a feeling that I was in for a very special treat and boy, was I right or what? I haven’t been able to forget that Kulfi decades later and I don’t think that I ever will. [Read on…]
I love a good Ice cream any day. Keyword here is ‘Good’. Most home-made ice creams are so creamy that they almost taste like frozen cream. And even though I like my ice creams super-rich, I don’t like them to be too creamy in a weird sort of way. Am I making any sense? May be I had a brain freeze from too much ice cream. Anyways, so I was saying that I am picky about my ice creams. And home-made ice cream always run into the danger of either over doing it or under doing it. Either the ice cream is too creamy to taste like an authentic one or not rich enough to avoid crystallization. And it’s a challenge to get it just right. [Read on…]
I had a love-hate relationship with HOLI as a child. I would be wait for Holika-Dahan with all my heart only to hide in my room all day long, the next day. Our neighbors had this huge yard at the back of their house where we would spend hours assembling the logs, branches, twigs and what ever (that we had collected from a lot of places) into a triangle-shaped structure – Holika. [Read on…]
The nineties were all about “Tann ki Shakti, Mann ki Shakti – Bournvita!” and “I am a Complan boy, I am a Complan girl”. It was such a ‘in-thing’ to add your choice of poison to milk before drinking it that I got sucked right into it! There wasn’t and still isn’t a day when I can have a glass of plain white good old milk. I know that’s bad. So while in the mornings it was Bournvita, in the evenings it was cold coffee. Oh, I am making it worse, ain’t I? And when moms have to make a choice between their kids having milk with additives or no milk at all, they go with the obvious choice. [Read on…]
I don’t know what else to call it!! I really don’t!! When I first saw this brioche in Dorie Greenspan’s book ‘Baking- From my home to yours’, I knew instantly (actually, after I had drooled all over that page) that I won’t be able to sleep unless I make this bread. Even though this bread required multiple rises, there was no way in the world that I would go on with my life without tasting a slice of this glorious bread. And I have to tell you, it was my best ‘To-bake-or-Not-to-bake’ decision ever!!!! One bite into this bread and I was an official Dorie Greenspan FAN. I, then emailed the ‘HMH Trade Publishing’ house and asked for their permission to use this recipe on my blog and they were gracious enough to let me. [Read on…]
What’s with men and grocery lists? What is so difficult about looking into a list and picking a few fruits and vegetables as per the quantity mentioned? It would be a record if I get exact things in the exact quantity that I want, one day. Now to be fair, I do ask my husband to pick some never-heard-before stuff but in my defense, I always text him a picture of what it looks like. But I still have to be next to my phone the entire time he is out. The other day, [Read on…]