Chef at Large

I remember these from my childhood - my grandmother used to make these every once in a while, and less frequently, my mother too. Less frequently, because they use a different type of banana called ‘Narenda-parram’ (pronounced quite differently -na-ainda-payyam or whereabouts), which aren’t widely available in North India. Much firmer than the normally available [...]

My grandmother passed away this past weekend, on the 15th of August. A strong woman who worked quite hard all her life, she was an excellent cook too. One of the rapidly disappearing members of the Anglo Malayali culture, her upbringing had strong British influences, some of which found its way into her food. After [...]

Every so often I wonder if I wasn’t a pastry chef would I be working in the corporate world sitting staring at the computer and look at the prices of shares go up and down? But right now am apprehensive - shall I add more sugar to my dessert, or not?
I have a photo shoot [...]

I travel to Bakewell nearly every day of the week to work at a client’s premises. Try as I did, I finally succumbed to the smell of freshly baked Bakewell puddings.
As per Wikipedia: The tale told to tourists is that this dish is an accidental invention of the 1860s, which occurred when a nobleman visiting [...]

Today’s dinner was quite interesting - with a multitude of dishes, all cooked by Zainab. There was chicken korma, kebabs, dal, rice, okra, but the star of the evening was a crunchy and nutritious prawn salad, that could quite honestly be described as truly divine.
In Zainab’s words: “Simply toss pre-cooked prawns rocket, spinach, and watercress [...]