Food & Travel

Khichdi is easy to cook and a versatile one-pot meal using rice and lentils, boasting of variations using substitutes of rice and lentils. Sabudana (tapioca pearl), millets, different types of daal are becoming popular among health-conscious eaters. The spices also vary between regions and so do the accompaniments served with the dish. The choices of

Whether you are exhausted after a long day at work or simply craving something yummy and simple but flavourful and nutritious, a plate of piping hot khichdi topped with desi ghee (clarified butter), served with pickle, grilled brinjals, roasted potato, and tomato mash (commonly known as chokha) and papadum is one of the first things

The year was 1988. Fresh out of college and six months to go for further education. I jumped at a plan to visit my sister who lived in Male, the capital city in the Maldives. The Maldives is a group of about 1200 coral islands, and part of the same archipelago as the Lakshadweep. It

Between the stuffiness of the Brits, the stiffness of the Japanese and the saccharine sweetness of the American agony aunt, Tea has indeed suffered. It has become this wimpy brew that can be manipulated by the upper classes to reveal the degree of snobbishness they wish to exhibit or equally objectionable, the perfect liquid to

The homely Ginger doesn’t get its due. But in fact, it’s a widely used spice in both sweet and savoury dishes with an ancient lineage to match. Ignore it at your own peril! There is a caste system among spices, and it’s based on price, an economic tool that we all know is often flawed.

Picture Credit: Suki Iyer As I begin to write about curd, its memories are not restricted to only taste and texture! I reflect on what curd means, and the sacrosanct space curd occupied in every meal while I was growing up. After spending considerable time across a few native cuisine cultures that I began to

After many years I got a chance to visit Varanasi to attend the wedding of my niece. The airport itself was a pleasant surprise, new and swanky, with wide and tarred roads leading to the city which looked the same as in the earlier visits, and as crowded. We checked in to a swanky hotel

Stories revolving around food remind me of college days and my train journeys from Delhi to Jamshedpur, my hometown. While traveling from home, there was much less excitement around food as we were loaded with home-cooked food, neatly packed, lasting us the journey of 24 hours. There were not many direct trains from Delhi to