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SOBA NOODLES WITH ROASTED TERIYAKI MUSHROOMS & BOK CHOY

I love a good teriyaki sauce provided it’s not too cloyingly sweet. Which, unfortunately, always seems to be the case with most dishes/recipes associated with the name. So although I say teriyaki here, you’ll find that it doesn’t really have that same sweetness that you might expect from it. All the same flavours, only, not… Read more »

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MUSHROOM MASALA

I fashioned my own little spiral-bound recipe book before I moved to Chennai, and this is one of the first recipes that I jotted down in it. Sounds simple enough, but just you try getting a generational recipe from your grandmum whose main units of measurement are ‘palmful’, ‘fistful’, a very rough translation of a… Read more »

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THAI GREEN CURRY PASTE

I already have a recipe for Thai curry paste on here. It’s one where I’ve used red chillies for heat and borrowed from the yellow and green pastes in terms of spiceage to make a kind of a hybrid orange version. I personally prefer a Thai red curry to its green counterpart, but that’s not… Read more »

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BURMESE-STYLE GUAVA SALAD

I like guavas alright, but if you saw my fruit basket you’d think that I have some kind of an obsession with them. I don’t know what it is, but I seem to always have a few knocking about the house. I prefer the pink-fleshed ones to the white, but to be honest, that’s got… Read more »

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10-MINUTE GARLICKY BOK CHOY

  Adding a time duration to a recipe title is a bold move, and I’ll admit that it sometimes makes me very nervous. Sure, if I were making say, guac, I’d freely tack it on, but for something that involves multiple elements of stir-frying and mixing and chopping, I feel the added pressure to make… Read more »

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LOW-SUGAR MACERATED PLUM JAM

I already have a recipe for plum jam on here, and while there’s absolutely nothing wrong with it and it’s one that I’ve been making for years, this is an updated version. (I will be taking down the other post). Is it just me or do you tweak your own recipes more than you try… Read more »

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ROASTED TOMATO & VEGETABLE PASTA SAUCE

This is unlike any pasta sauce you may have made before. For starters, there’s no pan involved for the sauce itself; you will of course be cooking your pasta in a pan (yet to come up with a nifty trick to dispense with that step, but we’ll get there). Hate to sound like a broken… Read more »

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CHILLI OIL

Chilli oil. Third batch in less than a month questions why I don’t have this up here yet. I’ve been meaning to make my own chilli oil for so long now, that when my friend posted her recipe a few weeks ago I took it as a sign and went for it. So easy to… Read more »

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OVEN-ROASTED ELEPHANT FOOT YAM

I have recipes on here for oven-roasted sweet potato, taro, and now elephant foot yam. (Slowing inching closer to exhausting all the tuber options available to me.) Potatoes of course do very well in the oven: wedges, fries, baked potatoes, cubed and roasted, whole-roasted baby spuds – your imagination is your only limitation. And even… Read more »

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SUN-DRIED TOMATOES

I have a recipe for oven-dried tomatoes on here which in hindsight seems a bit silly. When you live in a city like Chennai and have the sun at your disposal all year round, I can’t imagine why you’d need to even turn the oven on or need any form of gadgetry for this task…. Read more »

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LOW-SUGAR MACERATED STRAWBERRY JAM

Let’s address what sounds like that unnecessary first step: macerating strawberries. Maceration is a process by which fruits are tossed in sugar, lemon and flavourings—in the case of strawberries it’s usually rum, balsamic vinegar or vanilla. Maceration does two things: 1) Added sugar draws out the natural sugars from the strawberries, as a consequence intensifying… Read more »

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POMEGRANATE MOLASSES

If you’ve been following along on Instagram, you will have noticed that this is my second batch of molasses in the past month. I had no complaints about the first batch except that it yielded a mere ¼ cup of molasses (I got up to a ½ cup thereabouts on the second run). I wanted… Read more »

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KOHLRABI AND APPLE SALAD

  Admittedly a boring photograph. In the (hypercritical) eyes of someone trying to make food look as good as it tastes, it falls short. Way short. A herb for contrast would’ve been great for this but nothing worked with the flavours here – mint, basil, coriander, parsley, nothing. My biggest food related pet peeve is… Read more »

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BAKED BEANS (USING BLACK-EYED BEANS)

Hate to break it to you, but baked beans are not baked and black-eyed peas are not peas. Baked beans are made on the stove-top with no baking or oven involved. The name came about because Heinz—one of the oldest and largest manufacturers of tinned baked beans—used to follow a method of filling cans with… Read more »

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PEANUT, SESAME & COCONUT BALLS WITH JAGGERY

These peanut balls teetered precariously on the edge of turning into peanut butter but the desiccated coconut salvaged them. Not that peanut butter could ever be a bad thing, but I had my mind set on these. Peanuts, when blended, will eventually become peanut butter. These balls follow the same blending process, only, you don’t… Read more »