My World of Food and Travel

We were making our itinerary for visiting Coorg (Kodagu district) when the name Bylakuppe cropped up. A little bit of research on the internet told us that Bylakuppe is actually home to not one, but two Tibetan settlements adjacent to each other, making it the largest settlement in India. It is located near the town of Kushal Nagar in Coorg, some 220 km from Bangalore. I have always been attracted by Tibetan monasteries and the pictures of the Namdroling monastery on the net allured me. “Let’s keep Bylakuppe on our itinerary,” I suggested to the husband. Done, so said the husband and there we were, on the afternoon of 22 nd March 2013. It was a lovely sunny day when we entered the gates of the settlement. Beautiful homes with well-kept gardens greeted us on both sides of the road. Every home was characterized by multi-coloured player flags fluttering cheerfully in the air. Tibetan women in their traditional attire peeked out of the shops they were tending to, while robed...

  We were in Coorg (Kodava district) last week and the region’s beauty just blew our minds away. As did its amazing cuisine – especially, the spicy Pandi Curry. It was a pork curry like no other I had tasted.  I should mention that my initiation to pork took place only after my marriage some 3 years back. In my life prior to marriage, I was brought up to believe that the pig was not a nice animal to have as food. All thanks to my dad whose favourite expletive was ‘ Suwar ka bachha’ (Son of a Pig).   The word pig, thus, would evoke in my mind visions of fat, grunting pigs wallowing in filthy water.   No, not a nice animal to eat, for sure. I had built up such a mental block against it that even when my friends and cousins spoke of pork with drooling mouths, I was not a bit tempted. People who knew I was from North East India would be surprised at my aversion to pork. “What? You don’t eat pork?” was the common refrain. All that changed after I got mar...

Day 2 and the last evening at my sister’s place, home-sitting for her, along with my parents. What do I cook today? I was too tired after a hard day at work and did not feel like cooking anything elaborate. Besides, the parents have turned really sparse eaters and preferred light food. I decided to carry out my previous evening’s plan of making my sis’s crumb-fried whole chicken legs . This time I went to the shop and thankfully, the chicken legs were available this time around. I thought I had the rest of the ingredients at home and happily came back from the market. If there is any moral to be learnt, it is this – never make any assumptions. There was no egg at home, required for the dish. Nor was there any bread to make breadcrumbs, but that could be taken care of. I usually fall back on Marie biscuits to do the trick. So, in the absence of these two ingredients, I decided to play around with the recipe a bit. If it turned out right, I will call it my version of KFC-s...

I am house-sitting for my sister. Well, sort of. My parents are also present and I have a feeling that I am here just to unwind while they looked after my toddler. But, I will cook.  Now, here is the problem. Sis and family will be leaving India soon and so her kitchen is kind of…un-stocked. I took a look at her shelf and planned to make her signature dish of crumb-fried whole chicken legs , a super tasty and super easy recipe with hardly any ingredients required. But as luck would have it, the shop ran out of whole legs.  “Will chicken wings do?” the husband spoke over the phone from the shop. Why not, maybe I could make honey-drizzled grilled chicken wings . But I did not want to use my sis’s oven. I am very scared of using others’ kitchen gadgets. What if my clumsiness resulted in some fuse or blow-out? Quite possible.  So, what do I cook? The husband was getting restless and I had to say something.  “Okay, get the wings.” ...