My World of Food and Travel

And so Diwali is over and my parents have left. I did a lot of eating and cooking during the whole time my parents were here. While I made Ma cook for me my favourite dishes, I tried to return the favour by making some new dishes as well. Ma eats sparingly nowadays, blaming it on her age, but Deta is still eager to try new food. He saw a packet of Basa fish fillets one day at the shopping mall and wanted to know how it tasted like. I bought the fish fillets and experimented a little at home. The first attempt turned out to be a big disaster though everyone put up a brave face and said it was fine. I knew better. So, I chucked all my great ideas about creating a new recipe and decided to stick to the tried and tested formula of a fish fry in my second attempt. That, thankfully, went about quite right and I even made Deta try his hand at frying the fish. Nobody had to put up an act of valour at the dining table that day. Here is my recipe for spicy crumb fried fish. Spicy Crum...

April is the month my in-laws had got married. March was when my parents had tied the knot. So, we celebrated another wedding anniversary at our home last Wednesday.  The husband, who had single-handedly cooked for my parents’ anniversary dinner, opted to do the same this time around as well. I had no complaints, given his culinary skills; although the aftermath of the ‘kitchen-storm’ can be a little daunting. Once again, I found myself entrusted with the task of preparing the appetizer. Last time, for my parents’ party, I had come up with Amritsari Fish Fry . It was inspired by a conversation we had in office. Call it sheer co-incidence, but the same thing happened this time also! Nowadays I seem to find my cooking mojo in my work-place!  We have this office boy who makes the round of everyone’s cubicles at around 12.30 pm, half an hour before the scheduled lunch time, to get orders from people who had not brought their food. Not that we can order for stuff su...

It was my parents’ wedding anniversary on 19 th March and we planned to hold a small party at our home. As usual, I got excited about the menu. But one thing kind of acted as a spoiler – it was a weekday and that meant I would have to come back from office and cook. So, essentially, the menu could not include elaborate dishes that required much preparation and cooking time. I was at work when the idea of making a fish fry struck me. It actually happened during a casual chatter among us during lunch time. K, the only pure vegetarian colleague in our department, had innocently remarked that the Bengali family living in the apartment below hers regularly fried fish and that she could not bear the smell. That sparked off a lively discussion regarding fried fish among us non-vegetarians, much to her dismay. We recalled every fried fish dish that we had come across and most of us agreed that Amritsari Fish Fry beat Tawa Fried Fish quite hollow. K, in the meantime, was hurriedly sh...

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...

My father-in-law goes out for his walk every morning. He always has a few anecdotes to relate to us while we are having breakfast. Sometimes it is the old fellow who sells vegetables or the contentious lady in the park. Some days he will visit the ‘Safal’ vegetable outlet on the way home and make purchases. He will then show me the fresh leafy vegetables or green beans or chillies which he had picked out with utmost care. “Only the best of the lot,” he would tell me with pride. One morning, I entered the kitchen to find a bunch of beautiful pumpkin flowers on the kitchen slab. As a child, I used to think that only the Assamese community had these flowers for food. I realize now that the food habits of mankind around the world are not so dissimilar after all. Besides us and the Bengali community, people from as far as Italy and Turkey have been consuming these flowers since ages.    Courtesy: Google images (I forgot to click the flowers!) I was gla...

And so, another Diwali comes to an end. It always saddens me when we have to take down our fairy lights and store away our earthen lamps. Festivals do have their way of taking leave; everything looks so glum for a while. And then the next one comes along! Thankfully, in a country like India, we are never short of festivals. Diwali has always been my favourite festival, unlike, say Holi. I am scared of people clamouring over each other to put colours. But Diwali is different. Although I am not much into bursting crackers, I like the way all the houses are cheerfully lit up. As children, both sis and I would be silently competing with our neighbours in decorating our house in a more innovative manner. And now, since both of us are married and staying in the same city, Bangalore, we compete with each other in decking up our rented homes! She has always been my confidante and when I decided to create this blog, she was the first to know about it. Perhaps she is the only follo...