My friend Antara tells me that she can’t cook. “It’s too stressful,” she tells me when I try to probe. “I should have ordered in,” she laments, when we arrive at her home, although an appetite whetting smell of roasted onions, ginger and garlic lingers tellingly in the air. “What did you make?” I ask,…
Tag: children
The First Naming
When I lift Agastya up to inspect my cooking, he looks at me expectantly. I say “that’s matar paneer.” He solemnly repeats the phrase “matar paneer” as if at a naming ceremony, and proceeds to ask for the dish by name several times, “Mommy, I want matar paneer,” as he grows hungrier in readiness for…
Matar Paneer
This morning I wake up bright up and early. I am going to make my mother-in-law’s matar paneer for the first time. Her delicious recipe comes from various North Indian neighbors, such as “Singh Bhabhiji” from her old residential colony in Bombay. So I call mummy who is back in Vizag to talk about the…
Kattu, toor dal with garlic
In the winter, Agastya starts sniffling. One sniffle turns into the next and we start on a progression of back-to-back colds. Sometimes they start with a fever, sometimes with runny sneezes and sometimes with a bad cough. They last a week, sometimes two, and a new cold often starts before the old one finishes. I…
Paneer Butter Masala
I like looking at cook books, but the Indian cooking ones usually scare me. The list of ingredients will be long and complicated and some recipes will say something to the effect of “two medium tomatoes” and “one large onion” and “a generous pinch of cumin.” I am unsure of what that means, having had…
Andhra-style potatoes
My husband introduced me to the food from his native state of Andhra Pradesh when we were dating. The cuisine and its cooking style was a revelation for me. For instance, a simple sookha aloo-pyaaz or dry potato-onion dish tasted completely different because of the cooking process, the treatment of ingredients and a slightly different…
Stir-fried Okra
Sometimes when I am in the kitchen, the strongest association that I have with the food, in this case okra, is the memory of a two-and-half year old Agastya hovering around, helping in some way or just getting involved in the vegetable that I am making. My mother has always claimed that all little children…
Cauliflower
Sometimes my tiny toddler clambers into his dad’s lap at dinner time and proceeds to messily eat everything on the plate, small fingers moving busily from table to mouth, with a look of intense concentration on his face. This, in spite of having finished his own dinner just an hour ago. During such moments, I…
Calcutta Chow 