Hot Take: Sriracha, Climate Change and Comfort Food

On days when climate anxiety is running high, I hold on tight to my coffee mug. I wonder what days without coffee and chocolate would be like, immediately check my privilege and go down a bleaker path. News of food shortages are becoming a lot more common, but I didn’t anticipate stories on ‘How toContinue reading “Hot Take: Sriracha, Climate Change and Comfort Food”

Mango, Pista, Malai

The dessert is getting quirkier. In the growing universe of gelatos, vegan, low-sugar/no-sugar, artisanal ice creams, the syllables are adding up. You have everything from black sesame and honeycomb, blue cheese, lavender, basil to the Indian spinoffs gulab jamun, pani puri, puran poli and more. I’ll take the salted caramel and the fruit flavours mostContinue reading “Mango, Pista, Malai”

From the Coast: A Prawn and Mango Curry Recipe

When you are born in a coastal town, seasons revolve around fish. Summers may invoke mango fervour, but it’s also the season when the curry powders and masalas are made, dried fish cleaned and stocked for the year, and tangy fish curries spur afternoon siestas. The smell of dried fish (shrimp, prawns, bombay duck) fillsContinue reading “From the Coast: A Prawn and Mango Curry Recipe”

Sweet Nibbles

When the pandemic nudged so many of us back into the kitchen, it also made us turn to old comfort recipes. Ones that had been forgotten, or replaced with easier alternatives, including packaged food. The early days of the pandemic made me feel like a child again, back in my village near Ratnagiri, where theContinue reading “Sweet Nibbles”

Sunshine

Summers begin withraw mango curries,jackfruit, cashew kernels,and ice applesbut it isn’t until I’ve hada bite of the Alphonsothat the nostalgia takes holdtransporting me to the verandawith the whitewashed walls.To the farm kilometers awaywhere the mangoes are still out of reachthe lone cashew, once a jump awayHas grown like an unruly teenager,drooping at the shouldersThere isContinue reading “Sunshine”