I found a thick twisted skein of sheep wool in my closet today.  The band around it said Wensleydale Yorkshire.  I held the creamy braided wool against my cheek, feeling its roughness, breathing in sheep and wool and the village of Dent from two years ago.   The boys and I were in England, with cousin…

“The universe is made of stories, not atoms“ Muriel Rukseyer Persephone It’s spring. I return to the same place again and again.  Something is different each time.  The place has changed or have I.  Or could it be the moment?  The history of time that has preceded this moment.  I see peonies in full bloom…

Last night, Agastya, fourteen and rather tall now, informed me after dinner, “I am going out for ice-cream.”  I ran after him.  “Are you meeting a friend? Why are you getting ice-cream now?  Don’t buy ice-cream just for yourself – can you bring some back for me.  Don’t spend too much.” A few minutes later,…

I look outside my window and see the large oak trees, their branches criss-crossing across the brick faces of the rowhouses.  I wonder if they were as large when we moved into this house, now eight years ago.  They must have grown.   When I am outside I count the trees.  I have been surrounded by…

The air is still, it hangs motionless.  Occasional steps on the floor above.  My fingers tapping on the typewriter, soft clicks.  So quiet that I can hear myself speaking words as I type. Light floods in from the windows, the sun is weak, so typical for a January afternoon.  I’ve just eaten lunch, a risotto…

My waking thought is always that of tea.  I walk upstairs, put the pan on the stove with one cup of water and a half cup of milk. Three cardamoms and a knob of ginger crushed in the mortar and emptied into the milk.  It comes to boil in a few minutes, the milk rising…

As a child, I waited for Diwali all year. Mom would be dressed in yellow.  I always thought she was the most beautiful person I had ever seen.  I still do.  Small-boned, wrapped so elegantly in the several yards of cloth that most Indian women wear, called a sari.  She’s dressed in yellow this year…

It begins snowing today.   You look at the window, and there they are, dancing outside, flurry-ing and twinkling.  Little ballerinas, these snowflakes in their white tutus with just a touch of holiday glitter.  Your first visit from them this year.  You can hear their laughter, the excited twitter.    You take the dog for a walk…

“We are having chole bhatura for dinner today,” declared Agastya, early this morning at breakfast.  I had just dragged myself out of my warm bed, cranky because I had to be fasting before my annual physical and the accompanying blood test.  The nurse could only fit me for a 9.30am appointment, which seemed hours away…

My deck is a small square space in the back of the second floor of our home. The entrance is through the living room into the playroom. Suddenly the door opens into an open patio, sky and sun above it, with a view into all the small quiet backyards on this block. You could almost…

A few months ago, Vijnan showed me a picture of a brown haired puppy, a tiny mite pictured on the deck in a basket, that had shown up somewhat unexpectedly in our search for a dog. We were longing for one, both of us secretly hoping for a dachshund, similar to the dogs we grew…

“What are you doing this weekend?”  It was a casual question, asked as I was walking to the train.  And I of course, yet to master the art of the easy answer, wanted to launch into the details of what makes a meaningful weekend for me.  What does the weekend mean, what role does it…

I went to the Greenmarket two days ago in the late evening, an hour before it closed.  The market was down to a few stalls, with some tables scattered with last of the season heirloom tomatoes from New Jersey.  Dark, leafy greens, touched by the cold, reminiscent of dark soil, cold air and days growing…

My heart beats so I can write.  Feel pen against paper.  It’s been so long.  I feel the beckon, the seduction.  Like the smell of warm pistachio cake rising from the oven.  Nuts, vanilla, and a hint of cardamom.  I’m not sure why I don’t give in.  Sometimes it feels as though I would stop breathing if…

We had been discussing Christmas gifts.  “I know what we should get for you, Mommy,” said Agastya, very confidently, “a pot.” I was surprised.  “Why?”  I asked.  “Because you love to cook,” he said. I hadn’t realized that my then 5-year old knew this of me.  “But I don’t cook as well as nani or…

My boys were away this afternoon and I woke up from an afternoon nap with a craving for cake and tea, faintly recalling a reference to olive oil cake made at dinner the previous night.  Which had brought to mind fruity olive oil, clementines, lemon zest, and of course a lazy Mediterranean vacation. This cake…

    Sometimes, some decisions are not easy to accept. Life might make them. Or we might make them for ourselves. In a short while, I have found myself everywhere. On and off carousels of different colors. Building relationships where the timing might not work.  Others rising, phoenix-like from ashes in the ground and taking…

In Food Rules, Michael Pollan says “The french fry did not become America’s most popular vegetable until industry took over the jobs of washing, peeling, cutting, and frying the potatoes — and cleaning up the mess. If you made all the french fries you ate, you would eat them much less often, if only because…

I don’t know where to begin.  Let’s just say I’m here.  Back again, happy, optimistic… My mother-in-law makes a spicy, savory upma from semolina (sooji).  It’s South Indian any time comfort food, and takes minutes to make.  Last week my friend Sukanya made sooji upma as I stood watching.  I love her cooking, and I…

I know that restaurants all over America frequently carry “pasta with butter” on their children’s menu.  When I see these words, I always think, seriously?  no peas, no carrots, no broccoli, not even a soupçon of garlic?  Just butter and pasta? Until of course one day, when my friend Vrushali begins telling me about the…

I’ve been counting days with a sinking heart.  Three months later is finally here.  Mom and dad are leaving for India.  These parents didn’t give birth to me, but as I keep telling them, they’ve given me re-birth, the chance at a new life. Until recently, I was a mother who worked part time, working…

I haven’t made jam tarts since I stepped out of the old kitchen in my childhood home at Bright Street.  Yesterday, while searching for an activity to do with five year old Agastya that didn’t involve colorful playdough bits stuck all over the carpet, these buttery jam tarts came to mind.  If you are not too…

Do you remember the times that your life moved forward in an almost unseen way?  When in a moment you knew, for certain, that life had changed.  When, despite everything, a shadowy dream seemed to take life. Like the words from Rainbow Connection. Have you been half asleep? And have you heard voices I’ve heard…

Sunday mornings are when I leisurely cook a pot of beans.  I have made rajma for several weekends now, simmering the beans for almost three hours each time.  The boys enjoy sitting down to a hearty meal of rice and beans after their morning soccer class, and I feel sated just watching them eat.  Beans…

Once in a while, just once in a while, you have to have a cookie.  A warm, straight from the oven, crunchy on the edges, soft-in-the-middle, tasting of butterscotch and vanilla, chocolate chip cookie.  Especially if you have two boys who mostly eat very good things, that suddenly start expressing desires for vending machine chocolate…

“This tastes even better than fries,” I thought, as I bit into the crisp red-brown morsels that were soft and a tad chewy inside. They were dusted with salt and chilli powder, and the crackle, softness, spice and salt present in one hearty, umami-filled bite meant that I couldn’t stop popping them in my mouth….

On Sunday, Agastya and I went Valentine cookie decorating with Dani Fiori who designs couture cookies for the likes of Martha Stewart and Real Simple magazine.  There were bottles of pink and white and lavender royal icing all around us on red tablecloths.  We were given cute owls, love-bugs and hearts to decorate with tiny…

Being married and living in close proximity with another human being means that I sometimes come under close scrutiny.  Not only are my good attributes admired, like my very straight nose or winsome smile, but my flaws are also held up to the light and dissected. “But I don’t want to change, love me as…

My sister and I dreaded those lauki-toru-parval days that tended to repeat themselves in never-ending cycles in our home.  Mom had decreed that every meal must have a green vegetable, and our green vegetable selection was limited, especially in the summer, to the gourds.  Bottle gourd, ridge gourd, snake gourd, ivy gourd, bitter gourd.  This…

I love old cities like Rome, Athens, Delhi, where you can feel that you are standing upon history.  There are old stones everywhere with hints of blue glazed tile and flocks of bright green parrots, and you keep passing monuments that have stood witness to centuries.  I always imagine that if I start digging in…

There is a set of little books in my house written by Sanjeev Kapoor, the beloved Indian celebrity chef, that belong to my husband.  The books are so small and unassuming, marked Rs. 89 each, that you could miss them entirely.  One of them has the title “Accompaniments.”  That one I had never even bothered…

Before I return home to India, my mother calls and asks me each time”What would you like to eat?  What should I make for you?”  I always find the question amusing and quaint and sweet, and put it down to one of my mother’s quirks.  But recently, I am becoming the same way.  When I’m…

I returned from my trip to India.  It was wintry, dark and bleak when we landed.  My house felt stark and empty and there was no food.  I struggled to adjust to the cold, the dry heat from the radiators, the need to cook again. I’m more homesick than usual this time.  It’s growing harder…

It’s fall.  The air has turned crisper.  It’s still dark at 6.30am.  The leaves hang suspended in the air, as though awaiting their fate.  Some have turned yellow.  Some will turn into a bright red.  In past years, I’ve bundled my entire family into the car and we’ve set off to look at the changing…

When I visited Ronnybrook Farm last summer, it was out of curiosity to see a big natural dairy brand.  They had a store in the Chelsea Market, a presence in the Union Square Greenmarket, and their products were even available at Sobsey’s in Hoboken.  Ronnybrook’s “beyond organic” milk was sold in quaint, impractical one liter…

Just the thought of a pineapple-anything brings up faint, early morning memories of my family’s pineapple patch in Assam and of the tins and tins of luscious, golden home-canned pineapple that lined our pantry shelves in Calcutta at the end of pineapple season.  My mother often made pineapple trifle — a simple but delicious concoction…

How much do I love thee, eggplant?  Let me count the ways… Alright, in too many ways.  I am beginning with one technique, that of grilling whole eggplant. Now that the summer is at an end and those big baskets full of shiny eggplant are going to disappear from the farmer’s market, I am already…

My first cookbook was a Ladybird children’s book called We Can Cook.  I was ten or eleven at the time, and my mother bought it at the annual Calcutta Book Fair.  My sister and I spent hours flipping through the slim hardbound volume, marveling at recipes for strange dishes such as “Welsh Rarebit,” “Shepherd’s Pie” and…

A few years ago I began buying cage-free hen eggs that were fed an organic vegetarian diet, and were not injected with hormones etc.  The eggs I presumed would be healthier and would taste better.  I didn’t find anything remarkable about these eggs.  Pale yellow yolks, the usual whites.  There was a subtle taste difference…

I never know what to make when we return from a trip.  We usually arrive back in time for lunch or dinner, and perhaps there is at most an hour before everyone starts getting really, really hungry. This time, after a weekend away at Sprout Creek Farm, my mother-in-law promised us a meal in no…

I’m easily seduced by the sight of orange carrots with their delicate green tops at a farm stall.  Last week, Hearty Roots at the Clermont Farmers market had carrots that looked so earthy, so beautifully sculpted and so vibrant that I couldn’t forget about them.  I didn’t buy any then thinking that I would find…

I love red bell peppers.  Although they are available all year round, for me, the most exciting time of the year is when they show in big piles at my farmers market.  I like to stick a whole bunch of them into my oven and roast them until they are charred and black.  Then I…

Every week I think about vegetable pakoras.  Deep-fried, piping hot chickpea flour (besan) fritter like creations that are full of minced vegetables.  Served with a side of Maggi tomato ketchup.  I had some delicious pakoras in Jersey City recently that were stuffed with chopped methi and coriander leaves and green chilli.  I will attempt to…

Vadas are savory lentil doughnuts that are made entirely with urad dal.  You can eat with them as is with coconut chutney or sambar or both or even just plain old ketchup, but my mother-in-law serves them dipped in salty yogurt that is flavored with a paste of green chillies and coriander leaves.  There’s a…

Last night I found myself mixing plain yogurt into my rice and then spooning it into my mouth with mango pickle.  It tasted soothing, nourishing, spicy….and incredibly delicious.  My husband always ends his meals in this traditional South Indian manner.  He also eats his meals in “courses” – first plain rice mixed with the vegetable…

What’s on the menu today?  Baghare baingan, meaning tempered eggplants, from Hyderabad.  Agastya fondly calls this dish “eggplants in peanut sauce” but to be fair it also has an equal quantity of coconut and sesame seeds in it.  My husband’s cousin, Kasturi, made this richly flavored eggplant dish for me at our first meeting, about…

My mother-in-law, a sweet bespectacled lady with an infectious chuckle, arrived last week.  She stepped into my fifty square foot kitchen and immediately transformed it into her own space.  The spices were rearranged, the lentil shelves were cleaned out and essentials like garlic, ginger, onion and cilantro were restocked.  We went shopping for bags of…

“You haven’t cooked even once the entire time I’ve been here,” my mother sniffed, as her ten-day visit came to a close.  “I think you like to eat more than you like to cook.” I protested “But mom, if you cook I get to taste your cooking.  Then I know what to make, how to…

Amul cheese, the medium cheddar kind that comes packaged in a canned tin in India, was my first love.  I remember creeping to our white fridge at night to steal slices of comforting white bread and cheese for a midnight snack.  It was the only cheese that was readily available when I was growing up…

Recently, my mom and her sister, my masi, came to visit me for a few days from India.  On the morning that they were about to arrive, I knew that I had to make lunch for them.  What should I make, I wondered?   My mom I’d seen nibbling on lettuce leaves and other bits for…

In June last year, I found a lavender pound cake at the Rhinebeck Farmers Market.  I had never encountered lavender in a cake before, and this cake had a sprig of lavender pressed into the middle.  It looked both romantic and rustic.  Slices of this buttery pound cake went wonderfully well with cups of English breakfast…

Once in a while, the day rushes by without any attention to what we will do for dinner.  I find myself in need of a very simple recipe and a quick dish that I can get on the table in a half hour or less.  I want minimal chopping, uncomplicated prep work and as little…

On my last trip to Mumbai, I discovered a café in the lobby of our hotel that looked like it had stepped out of New York or London or some other big city.  The menu featured trendy sandwiches and salads and soups.  Where was pav bhaji and sev puri and pani puri,I wondered, as I looked at the menu.  Bombay…

My birthday weekend featured many treats: a trip to the countryside of Columbia County in upstate New York, a visit to Old Chatham Sheepherding Company, a stop at the Hawthorne Valley farm store, and two cakes: a mango upside down cake and a fresh cherry cinnamon cake.  I made one for myself and the other…

We were at a scantily populated park early on Sunday morning.  When we bundled into the car, Agastya piped up from the back “Daddy, let’s not go home.”  My thoughts exactly.  If I had ever needed proof that this was my son, with my exact set of peripatetic genes, here it was.   “How about strawberry…

When I left home, my mother gave me a few cookbooks.  Amongst them was a diminutive volume called Paneer by Tarla Dalal.  I had often seen my mother consult Tarla Dalal’s recipes.  Tarla was a prolific cook and writer, and her books tried to capture practically every cuisine in the world for the Indian vegetarian…

I love carrot cake.  However, it’s usually drowning in frosting and while good frosting tastes delicious, sometimes I just want a simple, hearty cake that’s studded with nuts and raisins. My recipe is inspired by David Lebovitz.  I like this recipe for several reasons.  First it uses the basic cake mix that I love: 1…

For a long time I couldn’t feel anything that resembled more than a faint sense of contented nostalgia for my home in Calcutta.  I had left home to study, to work and to build a family.  It was the natural order of things. Yet the minute my children began arriving I started to feel a…

On Fridays I give myself permission to make dessert.  A whole weekend lies ahead, there may be a friend or two to save me from eating the entire thing myself and it’s entirely pleasurable to have the smell of say, vanilla or pineapple suffusing the home.   I love fruit in my desserts, and a…

We spent a night at Sprout Creek Farm recently.  I’ve often bought their cheeses at the Union Square Farmers Market, but this was our first visit to this picture perfect farm that has cows, sheep, goats, hens and ducks.  They make cheese from goat’s milk and cow’s milk, and I returned home with several pounds of cheese….

I’d like to believe that my mother always cooked for me, but the truth of the matter is that Sukumar was the king of the stove in our Calcutta kitchen.  Tall, thin and hawk-like, Sukumar was our cook who made a monotonous yellow dal and “mixed” vegetables in a ubiquitous red sauce, day after day….

A recipe from my nani feels like a fragile thing, like the first blooms of spring. When I graduated from college in 2000, my maternal grandparents came all the way to the United States from Calcutta.  Just six years later, nani and nana decided that they couldn’t travel to my wedding in Jamaica.  I was…

Whenever I make these golden stir-fried potatoes that are crispy on the outside, soft on the inside and coated with a mixture of spices, I think of the word begin.   It’s a good way to begin Indian cooking.  First, it’s potatoes: starchy, universal, comforting and the baby ones, very cute in their roundness.  Everyone loves potatoes,…

During my second pregnancy nothing tasted better than a simple meal of Gujarati kadhi and rice.   Kadhi is a light yogurt curry that is flavored primarily with curry leaves and thickened with a chickpea flour called besan.  It is simultaneously spicy, sweet, salty and sour and has a mild, soothing texture. My recipe for kadhi…

Every other Friday I arrive for a playdate at my friend Dalia’s place with my boys in tow.  Dalia always makes me a comforting cup of tea, and I look very forward to the sharing of tea and conversation with a good friend.  On one occasion, I peer at Dalia’s stove and find thin crispy…

A few months ago, a friend said casually in passing, “I love black eyed peas.”  That statement intrigued me.  I’d never been too fond of lobia when I was growing up.  It was time to revisit these beans.  At Journal Square, I found them amongst the rows of glistening jewel-like legumes on the shelf at Bhavani’s….

This is an addictive sweet-spicy dry green chilli preparation.  These chillis are the long hot sweet type that you get in the Indian grocery store or at farmers markets in the summer.  The color varies — the hottest ones are dark green and very gnarled, almost like you’d imagine the fingers of the witch that…

Bise bela bhath means dal and rice in Kannada.  To me, the words always sound like a happy, anytime, tantalize-your-tastebuds type of one-pot comfort.  It’s because this dish engages all my tastebuds with its full bodied spicy, sweet and sour flavor.  The dish uses tamarind extract for the sourness and employs dried red chillies boldly…

This baked dish of delicate mushroom crepes topped with tomato sauce and cheese was a childhood favorite when I was growing up in Calcutta. It represented the best of Continental cuisine as I understood it – crepes from France, tomato sauce from Italy, along with exotic un-Indian mushrooms and a crust of delicious melting cheese…….

In Calcutta you will find little momo shops tucked here and there.  Momos, in my understanding, are steamed Tibetan dumplings, usually not vegetarian and very delicious – doughy, full of succulent filling and served piping hot. My sister and partner in all things forbidden, introduced me to fragrant herbed minced chicken dumplings at Hamro Momo,…

I’ve always been envious of the tasty chole (chickpeas) that my Punjabi friends seem to make so effortlessly.  When I ask for the recipe, often the whole operation seems hopelessly complicated.  One friend slow cooks the raw chickpeas for over 2 hours.  Another places a tea bag in her chole while cooking.  An online recipe…

This warmly spiced lauki chana dal recipe is a childhood favorite.  I grew up in Calcutta, and this nutty, hearty yellow lentil soup studded with pieces of translucent green bottle gourd showed up frequently at mealtimes. It’s a complete and nourishing meal when served with rice or Indian style bread. This dal can be made…

Last year I visited Poonam aunty’s home-run organic dairy operation in rural Assam and learned how to make paneer.  Although paneer making is an everyday event in my mother’s home, standing beside Poonam aunty in her kitchen that overlooked her green kitchen garden and her cow barn, was quite a different experience.  Poonam aunty refined…

  In the weeks leading up to my recent three month trip to Calcutta, I dreamed of how I would go to my nani’s house and stand beside her and soak in each little thing that she had to teach about cooking. I wasn’t disappointed. I spent several mornings in nani’s house this winter, peering…

Rajma, a spicy stew of red kidney beans, has always been on my mind.  I’ve encountered delicious ones here and there – for instance one that my friend Shalini makes.  When I ask her how and what, she says “It’s easy!”  Armed with those words, along with a recipe in a tattered cookbook that calls rajma,…

Agastya has always been in my kitchen, but recently I’ve discovered that he can make guacamole.  If I give him a soft avocado split in half, he scoops out the flesh and pounds it in the molcajete.  A little sprinkle of salt, and it’s almost good enough to eat.  If there is onion at home,…

On Mother’s Day Agastya came home from preschool with a card that he had made.  Inside, his teacher had transcribed “I love my mommy… because… she makes pasta for me.”  I was surprised.  To begin with, pasta was an occasional quick meal in our home.  It was our equivalent of fast food.  I liked to…

Writing about food is my guilty pleasure.  Recently, with a baby on the move, there hasn’t been time for any sorts of pleasure.  I cannot understand why my six month old baby feels the need to crawl aggressively, clamber up and take flying, frog like leaps on the carpet.  “What’s the hurry,”I wonder, as I follow…

It seems that I was all alone in an apartment in New York city just a little while ago.  Now life seems like it is bursting at the seams with a growing family.  I always have company for a walk or a talk.  Even my five month old baby appreciates a good stroll with Mommy…

The staple dal of my childhood was a yellow, insipid affair.  A small bowl of yellow lentils, presumably toor dal, that showed up on my plate day after day, usually tempered with ghee and cumin seeds and turmeric.  Monotonous and never-changing and nothing of what I wanted or missed when I came to the United…

I have recently begun to love cooking with fenugreek leaves.  It started with eating them kneaded into spicy rotis.  All as a result of becoming a frequent visitor of a take-out food counter called Rajbhog Foods in Jersey City. Rajbhog is a grimy, flourescent bulb-lit store that ladles out Gujarati food.  When I enter the store,…

I’ve grown to love the change of seasons in the northeast United States.  Each year I find that I wait for spring blossoms and fall leaves.  I’ve been here for fourteen years now, but this longing for the change in seasons keeps growing.  I crave it more with every passing year: there is something so…

    I have to confess that my mother-in-law’s recipes hold an exotic appeal.  Whoever heard of cooking with freshly roasted and ground chana dal and urad dal and white sesame seeds in the form of a spice mixture? This mixed vegetable dish of hers allows me to throw into a pan every leftover and straggling…

Mom’s left again.  Her twice daily cooking has left with her too.  Now every time I go into the kitchen and try to toss a bunch of wilted spinach or throw away leftover rice, I’m accosted by the question “what would mom have done?”  That spinach would have found itself in a dal or a…

My roommate in college, Serena, taught me how to make a moist banana cake studded with chocolate chips during our sophomore year in school.  I still remember how I fell in love with it at first bite.  And despite having a pastry chef for a sister, it was the only cake that I knew how…

I’m often at a loss for weekday lunch meals for Agastya.  We did a one-pot khichdi for a long time, but after a while he seemed to crave variety, and I somehow couldn’t manage to gather a proper Indian meal with roti, dal and sabji in time for lunch.  For dinner, yes, but not lunch.  So…

After each of my two boys was born, my mom arrived from India with strict postpartum dietary instructions from nani, my maternal grandmother.  Never mind that I had been eating all kinds of things up until then. Nani’s recommended diet consisted of ghee, milk, ajwain, and a couple of less-known compounds such as gond, which…

At 8am on certain days each week, my door opens to reveal a small, dark lady with a dimpled smile.  I’m usually waiting for her anxiously, and I breathe easier when I hear the doorbell ring.  My morning has started much earlier and fairly reluctantly, with two bright-eyed and widely awake kids.  Kirti behn is…