Bombay Foodie

I met Wesley at noon on a sunny day in May at the entrance to Tyrna village. The meeting had been three months in the making. Back in February, I had seen the pictures a friend posted from a trekking trip to Meghalaya. I'd been so taken in by the double decker living roots bridge that I immediately called Chalohoppo , the travel company she had gone with, and booked a trip for myself. I'm not a trekker which means that instead of the rugged trip my friend had taken, I had arrived at a compromise. We will start the trip with the trek and then spend the rest of our stay in Meghalaya at a nice lakeside resort just outside Shillong. Which means that the day before I met Wesley, I'd landed in Guwahati and been met at the airport by a friendly Chalohoppo driver for a four hour drive to Cherrapunjee. On arriving at the Sai Mika resort, nestled in the middle of mountains, I called the number I'd been given and was greeted by a friendly, enthusiastic voice of our guide for the ...

Summer in India is mango season. Even when my other favourites - litchis, cherries and apricots - show up in May, mango remains the fruit of choice. In Mumbai, restaurants put aamras (essentially sweet mango puree) and mango lassi on menus across the board. Now I love sweet mangoes as much as the next person, but what I really like experimenting with is the flavour of the tart raw mango. We made pickles and chutneys with the raw mango, and I've added it to Asian style salads and to curries in the past. So this time, I decided to move base to south India and try my hand at raw mango rice. The rice itself is fresh and summery and to up the flavour quotient even more, I served it with badanekayi bajji, a unique eggplant relish I first saw on Madhuri's blog. Get the recipe for the relish straight from Madhuri's while the recipe for the raw mango rice is given below. Ingredients 2 cups cooked basmati rice 1 raw mango, peeled and roughly chopped 1/2 cup fresh grated co...

The Kalras are the first family of the food industry. Where people find even one success story hard to achieve, Zorawar Kalra has managed win after win with Masala Library, Farzi Cafe, Papaya and most recently, MasalaBar. But much before they hit the stride with molecular gastronomy, there was Jiggs Kalra and solid Punjabi cooking. Made In Punjab, set inside Mumbai's Inorbit Mall, continues that legacy. We settled in with a watermelon shikanji, a delightful combination of watermelon and lime. If that's not your style, there are drinks aplenty to pick from, including a thick Amritsari lassi, complete with malai or cream pedas. To go with the drinks, Made in Punjab brought out a selection of starters for us to review. Now I'm gonna point out that I only tried the vegetarian food but their chicken is apparently legendary. The starters you see above are the usual combination of mushrooms, paneer and tandoori potatoes. But there was also a yam kebab. These four were spicy...

Often times, when brands approach me for a review, it's a process of discovery. But not when Borges asked if I will like to create some recipes with their pasta. Olive oil may seem like a very Indian thing now with hundreds of brands dotting supermarket shelves but there was a time, only a few years ago, when using olive instead of refined oil was a rarity. I recall I started buying this Spanish olive oil back then and pretty much stuck to the brand. And since I had Borges olives and olive oil already in my pantry, this seemed like a good time to give their pasta a try as well. Borges' pastas are made in Italy with durum wheat, the traditional hard wheat for pastas. I'm starting you off with a cheesy spaghetti but expect a summery penne coming your way soon. Now pastas have become super common on restaurant menus. But often times, they come fully smothered in a heavy white or red or god forbid, pink sauce. They are stodgy and spicy and you may as well be eating curry. ...

There was a time when north Indian food formed bulk of my food experiences and barring an occasional dosa, I had very little understanding of how other regions of India eat. I gradually picked up dishes and ideas but this expansion of palette happened in no particular order and was often influenced by people I met and stories I heard. Sometime I would hear the name of a dish and find it fascinating. Aloo posto was one such dish. We don't use poppyseeds in our curries and using a new spice as the base for a potato curry sounded exciting. Hence, the first time I found myself in a restaurant that had aloo posto on the menu, I eagerly ordered it. I was never more disappointed. What I expected was some form of spicy, crunchy potatoes. What I got instead was a bland, blah dish. I never got to like aloo posto but I continued to believe that poppyseeds and potatoes will make for a good flavour combination. In my mind, there are two basic flaws with aloo posto. By soaking poppyseeds ...

David Lebovitz is my favourite blogger. He's witty and charming; he lives in Paris and goes travelling for food around the world and he runs chocolate tours and writes ice cream books. David's list of places to visit in Paris was my travel guide when I visited and I wasn't disappointed at a single place that he recommended. His blog is also chockful of some brilliant recipes and I've made a few of them my favourites over the years. So when I found myself with a jar of dulce de leche, courtesy my friend Rachana , I immediately thought of David's recipe for dulce de leche brownies . Dulce de leche is caramalised condensed milk. You cook the tin of condensed milk slowly, until it changes flavour and colour to become a jar of candy you can scoop out with a spoon and eat. Which is what I did with most of my tin of dulce. Added flavour bonus if you also sprinkle some sea salt before digging it. But I still have half a tin left after a few days and that's what w...

A few months back, I was invited to a bloggers event by Kishco . This is a cutlery and cookware brand set up in the 1950s. But only in the last couple of years has the brand image been revamped by the second generation of founder family; in this case the fitness expert Namita Jain. Namita's launched a beautiful range of stainless steel cutlery and at the time of our event, they had also added a whole lot of 'healthy cooking' pots and pans that are being sold out of Kishco's flagship stores and a bunch of online and offline retail channels. We spent a pleasant enough afternoon drinking tea and admiring kitchenware and talking table etiquette. But in the end, I wasn't sure how to tell you all about the event or the brand. After all, a spoon's a spoon right? Not quite so, as it turns out. Namita gifted us all half a dozen soup spoons. I don't drink much soup so at first I thought I will have no use for these. But over time, I've found that these spoons...

Mumbai is the place to be when you want to try food from farflung corners of the world. If there aren't specialty restaurants catering to your tastebuds, there will be one of the countless popups serving your cuisine of choice. Except there are blatant misses. There is hardly anything from Africa. And while Mexico is well represented, there is almost nothing else from rest of South America. Rachana, over at second helping, is tackling this gap with the launch of her Latin American popup - Tan Bueno. It's a particularly brave venture given that her menu is completely and fully vegetarian. Rachana invited me over to taste her new menu and I can't help but tell you about this fabulous feast. At Tan Bueno, Rachana welcomes you with that refreshing Mexican summer drink, an agua fresca. Her version has pineapple and mint in it and we sipped on this delicious drink all through our meal. A meal that starts off with three brilliant appetizers. There are empanadas filled with mi...

I grew up in Punjab. Which means only one thing rice-wise - we eat basmati. We don't eat a lot of it since Punjab is largely a wheat eating state but when we do - be it with curry or the lentil porridge (khichdi) or the rice pudding (kheer), the choice of rice is always the long grained, fragrant basmati. Now basmati is a great rice for things like biryani but it's not a cure all and over the years, I've found several new favourites to match the recipe I have in mind. After trying everything from black rice to the nutty wild rice, here is my pick of the top 5 varieties to always have in stock. 1. For Plain Rice: The kind of rice you eat with a curry. You need the grains to be soft and short, and it doesn't hurt for rice to be smushy. This is one category with multiple contenders but my favourite at the moment is the Bengali Govindobhog rice. I first discovered it at Lavaash in Delhi and it took a fair bit of hunting but Govindobhog is now available in my local hype...

Have you noticed how large zucchinis grow to be. I like adding them to the mix when making stir fries but there is only as much squash you can add to mushrooms and peppers and babycorn. Which means I usually have half a zucchini leftover after a stir fry meal. Most days, the half zucchini is left to languish in the fridge but I think I have finally found the perfect recipe for it. It's zucchini fritters, made on a pan without much fuss at all. Now most recipes for such fritters call for eggs as binding agent but because even one egg will be way too much for my half zucchini, this recipe also features a secret ingredient - mayonnaise. Think about it - mayonnaise is really just egg and oil and flavour so you can't go wrong with this replacement. Ingredients 1 cup grated zucchini 2 tbsp cornflour 1 tbsp mayonnaise 2 tbsp grated cheddar salt and black pepper, to taste olive oil to fry, about a tbsp Put grated zucchini in a colander. Add 1/2 tsp salt, mix and leave ove...