Writing from my kitchen

Last night I watched the movie Julie and Julia. It was a nice movie;  nice especially for food lovers like me. The main character of the movie was a ‘Mr Boeuf Bourgignon’ ! Among, the various scenes and dialogues all involving cooking, feeding and eating, laced with glimpses of marital problems and difficulties in the way of success, I could not but help agree, with the wonderful adulation shown towards butter! She says “at the heart of anything that tastes so good…it has to be butter.” With all due respects to healthy food and those who are constantly in quest of all things healthy, I reiterate “butter is just so delicious!” But what has health got anything to do with taste. Health and taste to me are two variants of cooking. Healthy food may taste nice, but in front of tasty fare that has been cooked with an abandoned passion and no regrets, it kind of falls flat. If you disagree then close your eyes and think about; freshly baked bread with a generous pat of yellow bu

“ Say hello to yellow and swing with the blues”… these are not my words. A leading home décor magazine has quoted ‘Pantone’ the global authority on colours, who directs fashion and design industry on colour trends. According to him, the colour of year 2010 is blue. And! Mind you, not any blue but the hue that is a cusp between blue and green, which we all dearly call turquoise. Experts are supposed to have applauded this choice of colour, as it is known to lend serenity to your surroundings. They say turquoise, creates calm, peace and a sense of well being in your everyday atmosphere……. (Well, I do wonder how calming it would be to the senses, if I lay out turquoise cushions on a purple upholstered background!)  I don’t know if it happens to anyone else, but colours evoke images of certain foods in my mind and turquoise equates to the blue of Mediterranean seas. The colourful vegetables, healthily grilled meats and fish, different cheeses all swim before my eyes when I see

I have a great liking for this dip or spread, whatever it can be classified as. Having lived in the Middle East a good part of my child hood, initiated me to this bean dip very early in my life. Later,  after I was married and I was entertaining, I have often chosen to serve this to my guests. It took a number of tries before I came close to the original taste, my tastebuds still remember. There are umpteen different recipes one finds with slight variations . The prominent ingredients are of course standard. After much research done as part of my effort to perfect my recipe I have come to the conclusion that Hummus is of two varieties one basically very Greek and less popular, while the more popular is a Lebanese or Middle Eastern recipe. Soak 1/2 a teacup of sesame seeds for about an hour. Drain and pulverise to a fine smooth, using as little water as possible (this is sold in supermarkets as tahini…) Add 2 cloves of garlic along with the paste and grind till it

Sunday afternoons have been ‘lamb and rice’ lunch at my home ever since I can remember. And when I got married it, it was comfortable to know that there was a similar pattern there too. My mother’s lamb curry flavoured with  Indian spices and finished with coconut milk was as delectable as my Mother in law’s ‘Kosha Mangsho’ where the lamb was braised in a simple ginger garlic and onion gravy, until dark in colour and tender in texture. Lamb, or mutton which it is better known as in the Indian culinary arena, has always been a delicacy or a higher end meat than any other. It is interesting to note that, all festivities where any form of meat would be served, mutton was always called for. My earliest memories of mutton and festivities was of a ‘mutton curry and Idli’ breakfast on Diwali morning. Here I speak of a simple, easy to make, yet out of the normal recipe which my husband’s late aunt would always make when we visited her. It has a predominantly Bengali touch

I am really bad at keeping in touch. Don’t get me wrong! I am very much a socially active person, but I just can’t seem to pick up the phone, call friends I haven’t met for a while and say “How’s life?”, but when I do meet them, however long the gap has been I warm up and connect real fast. These days I’m trying to reform myself and do the ‘keep in touch’ act. It was during this process yesterday that I got invited out to an impromptu lunch. My friend had a couple of other friends/ house guests and she urged me to go over. And me having nothing much to do, was easily won. Ms friend has a beautifully kept home and an equally beautiful kitchen, fully equipped, and me being that I am, this is where I spend most of my time whenever I visit her.I walked into her in the midst of cooking, giving instructions to her cleaning maid, speaking to her daughter on the phone and in between checking on the refrigerator as to what to do for dessert. Since this is what most 21 st century hom

All this talk of BT Brinjals and the ensuing protests are getting to me…this has been the mainstay news in the papers these past few days. I have begun to have nightmares of decent vegetables disappearing from the face of earth!!....BT brinjals, then CT carrots, PT peas…God help us!! Brinjals, Aubergines, or Eggplants however, they are known as, are found across the world, in varying shapes, shades and colours. And more so important, it is always found in my kitchen! My husband, both my kids and must sheepishly admit, me too, seem to have a great liking for this vegetable or as Wikipedia classifies it ‘berry’. The most scrumptious way to have it of course is in the classical Bengali ‘Begun bhaja’ way; thick roundels of  brinjal, smeared with turmeric and salt, then deep fried to a rich golden colour. Strangely enough, brinjals were originally a very dreaded fruit or berry because of its deep purple colour. It was used for a wide variety of purposes in the middle ages, incl

Our latest buy, a grand looking dining table was in dire need of table mats and this need that saw me walking into a reputed home store in the city. I went in hoping to look, choose, pay and be out with my mats in about twenty minutes. But my! Have I ever been wrong in calculating time as I was on that day? The array of products bewildered me, kitchen tools I have seen mostly in catalogues and had never thought were available here were all before me. There were cutters and knives of all kinds. Peelers in different shapes and patterns, sieves, corers, were all like candy to my eye. But what really got my creative juices flowing was the humble garlic press. I call it humble but it is the epitome of my gourmet world…. (I find the flavour of garlic an absolute, to promote any food.) Geared, with my newly acquired culinary weapon I made a dip and served it with potato wafers. The combination of the chip and dip was heavenly and can be made in a jiffy especially when there are imp

P ristine white crockery has been an all time favourite with me. Colours are eloquent on a white canvas. There is nothing like a clean white plates (let the shape be any)…that makes food speak out. They come alive and present such a pretty picture that eye appeal scores high. After an era of experimentation with colorful pottery, it is peaceful to see most food outlets using white crockery.  When speaking of white plates, I remember the ancient ones in my grandmother’s kitchen. They were more a gray than white though, due to lack of high quality glazing used today. I particularly remember the old fashioned white sauce boat perched on the crockery shelf, waiting to be taken out when special guests came for lunch…guests for dinner was a rarity or rather a non occurrence! I came by a similar sauce boat few days back in a run down shop in a market in the older part of the city. The nostalgia was so strong that I bought it without a second thought; so excited was I that I caused much

After months of contemplation, I’m finally writing. Well, the writing was not the difficult part, but overcoming the initial shyness to write on a public forum took time. It took a lot of coaxing from a few of my near and dear ones to get me started. What would I like to write about…well anything that touches me, spoils me, about things that make me stop and think and those that make me turn around and take a second look. Food and entertaining is high on my list, as is living life the beautiful way. What is it that makes good food, interesting company and music of your choice headier than the best French wine? Couple of days back a few girlfriends from school met up, all successful in their own way, some married with kids, few without and one still single. The Zinfandel was good,   Bryan Adams crooned and my first time pate was a hit! 'Foie Gras' or fattened goose liver pate has always been a classic in the list of French hors’d’oevres ….of course mine was a