Week 15 – Easy Green Thai curry

Thai curry is something that's found on every single multi-cuisine restaurant menu. It's usually made using the easy way out - a ready made curry paste and coconut milk. An authentic thai curry uses a fresh curry paste made of thai basil, galangal, lime leaves, lemongrass, and birds eye chillies. Since these aren't readily available …

Week 14 – Aloo Capsicum Masala Fry

I'm a stubborn creature of habit. I have a set of dishes at every single restaurant that I frequent, and I have a set of restaurants that I know will never disappoint me. When I am cooking only for myself I could eat the same doodhi sabji and chicken curry the whole week. But sadly …

Week 13 – Baked Cheesecake

A cheesecake that isn't baked isn't really a cheesecake. There, I said it. 'Eggless' cheesecakes using gelatin and not eggs is only a pudding on a base. The joy of eating a cheesecake lies in relishing its dense yet light structure one forkful at a time till there's nothing left. The tang of cream cheese …

Week 12 – Chocolate Ganache

One of the building blocks of a good chocolate cake is a chocolate ganache. In the words of my current hero Bernadette Gee - "it's all fuckin' ganache!". Essentially ganache is made using cream and chocolate. Where it differs is the type of chocolate used and the ratio of chocolate to cream. The ratio is …

Week 11 – Salted Caramel

Salted Caramel is all the rage these days - in milkshakes, cheesecakes, mousse and desserts. The first time I discovered salt in dessert I was blown away by how it transformed something that could have easily been too sweet into something balanced with pops of sea salt. Oddly this excitement doesn't extend to when sugar …

Week 9 – Prawn and Bhendi Curry

I've never liked bhendi. It was always banished to the category of gooey and seedy with baingan, and though I have come to enjoy baingan as an adult, no such luck with bhendi yet. It's one of the few lucky vegetables that Dwayne enjoys, and his mother Aida taught me how to make this prawn …

Week 8 – Caramel Custard

My weighing scale wasn't working this week and I didn't know what I could make without using it to measure everything especially since I was craving something sweet. All of us grew up with some version of Caramel Custard - with flecks of nutmeg or vanilla bean, made in a pressure cooker or oven, usually …

Week 7 – Kurkure Bhendi

Dwayne enjoys bhendi but I don't. All the bhendi preparations my mother made were gooey. And seedy. And thoroughly unappetizing. But I do have fond memories of crispy deep-fried bhendi served with dal, rice and ghee at friends houses. We are older now, and apparently wise enough to reject deep-fried goods(only when said deep-fried goods …

Hello, friends?

I left this city when I was nine years old. Packed off to one boarding school, then another. I came back to go to college only to find that alternate education had damaged me beyond repair and this incessant life of gossip and wasting time by 'let's go to Causeway ya' was not for me. …

Week 6 – Parmesan Roasted Carrots

This experiment is fast becoming a project to find ways for me to eat vegetables I ordinarily wouldn't. Welcome to the next vegetable I now enjoy - carrots. I don't like how they taste raw, how they get mushy and unpalatable when overcooked, and I think carrot juice is the stuff of nightmares. When I …