My World of Food and Travel

The case of the missing chur-chur naans, to be precise. To this day I cannot hold back my laughter whenever I hear the name of chur-chur naan. And yet, what trauma we had five years back, all thanks to that seemingly innocent order we had placed on that fateful day in Delhi. Let’s have a flashback! We were in Delhi in 2010, immediately after my marriage, with all intentions of settling down there. Dwarka was a beautiful neighborhood at that time, with neat roads and well-planned retail precincts. While I missed the hustle bustle and the energy of Mumbai, somewhere in a little recess of my mind I was covertly pleased with how life was shaping up in Delhi. There was no running after local trains, for God’s sake! We were just a month old in Dwarka when my sister-in-law (SIL) decided to pay us a visit along with her husband (BIL), a fervent foodie. They were newly married, too, having married just two months before our own. During conversations one day, we realised that it wa...

And now to continue with my Malaysia trip. June seems so far behind now, when I had visited Kuala Lumpur. Like I had written earlier, I opted to see the city using the services of the HOHO bus – or the Hop On Hop Off tourist bus. I had earmarked a few places among the 26 options offered, preferring to drive through the other tourist spots. There was an audio guide on the bus that detailed the history behind each place of interest that we passed by. I reckoned I was not missing much by skipping the other sites.  Besides, I wanted to visit only those places that held my interest. HOHO was the perfect solution for discerning travellers like me. After having my fill of joy with the winged creatures in KL Butterfly Park , I moved on towards some more winged beings – the birds at KL Bird Park, which lay a short distance away from the Butterfly Park in the Lake Garden area. It is home to more than 3,000 birds, belonging to approximately 200 local and foreign species, and remai...

I was hit by an intense aroma as I entered Raquel’s kitchen. It was an October evening last year. We were in Goa, at Roberto and Raquel’s quaint homestay, a house with a history of over 500 years. The aroma seemed faintly familiar. I looked at Raquel with wonder. She had an impish smile on her face. “I prepared Goan Choriz for you tonight, with noodles,” she said. “I know you will love it.” I did. And that beautiful meal, partaken sitting at their wooden dining table in the bright, airy kitchen, with Raquel’s three children running around, has remained as one of my cherished memories. It was Raquel’s dish that I remembered when I opened the packet of Del Monte pasta. After all, it is only food that can connect you to two different places with cuisines as different as chalk and cheese.  On an impulse, I decided to cook pasta, an Italian staple, with Goan Choriz or Goan pork sausages – a potent delicacy that only the feisty Goans can conjure up. Italy. The name ev...

And I am back after a long, long hiatus! A lot happened in my real world and just let me say here that I am happy to be alive! Let’s hope those days don’t come back to haunt me again.  On that happy note, let’s continue our Kuala Lumpur series, shall we? Now, I had said this before and I will say this again – one of my main objectives in KL was to savour the region’s delightful cuisine. I already knew some of the famous dishes and places to dine, browsing through various food channels and articles on the net. Or so I thought. Because when I landed in KL, my memory bank emptied itself and suddenly I did not know what to eat and where to eat.  My hotel was located quite close to the twin towers and on the first day I roamed around aimlessly in search of food as I did not want to have the hotel buffet. I came across a curry house on the same street as my hotel but felt completely lost when it came to ordering. I observed the others and was quite astounded to see the amoun...