Chef at Large

Naheed recently went to Jordan for a holiday. On his return he brought me two spices I had only heard of before -Summack (or Summak) and Bahara. I’m not really sure how to describe Summack - it’s red in color and looks like a fine, lustrous chilli powder and bahara is a mixture of spices [...]

D is away officiating in the Tour of Britain, Britain’s premier professional cycling race, he left on Saturday and will be back in 9 days. In the interests of economy, I decided that I would buy a free range, local chicken to eat for the week- lunch and dinner. On Sunday the chicken, lemon [...]

Here’s a recipe by Ofelia - Cuban Black Beans. Perfected by her grandmother, this is a traditional Cuban recipe and the first one on this blog. Let’s hope we see more contributions from Ofelia.
- Sid
Ingredients:

1lb dry black beans
12 cups of water
2 green pimientos (bell peppers)
2 medium size onions
1 whole head of garlic mashed to a [...]

This curry surfaces on our menu every once in a while and I invariably overeat when this stuff is on the table. It tastes great with rice and good with toasted bread too.
Lightly oil your hands, then peel and chop the bananas anyway you wish. Sprinkle some salt and turmeric powder over then and keep [...]

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 [...]

We felt like a slightly ‘heavy’ meal yesterday and this chicken curry fit the bill perfectly. You’ll need minced chicken, potatoes, onions and garlic to begin with along with some stock, powdered aniseed, curry powder, cream, hung curds, sugar and seasoning.
Oh, and about the name - I simply couldn’t come up with a suitable name [...]

My soups have never been great - just ‘alright’ most of the time. I’ve been doing some reading and ‘book learning’ to overcome this. We had some guests over this Monday and I thought of going a little outside my comfort zone and trying a soup for once.
I’m glad I did, as it turned out [...]

My new menu planner seems to be working out well. I hope you’ve taken a look at it in the ‘Useful Stuff’ Menu overhead. It is definitely helping with organising things and removing the randomness from life in the kitchen.
I’ve been doing a fair bit of blog-hopping recently and find men are now at the [...]

Thought I’d pop in for a quick bite and read while the family shopped at the Great India Place. I’m gradually getting over my aversion to trying new places and Pizzaria Express looked as good as any other. It’s a new place started by a chap named Raghuvir Sahai. According to Mr. Sahai, he has [...]

The Citrus Cafe is in a small (and very good I must add) hotel called ‘The Lemon Tree’. Rather hard to find due to no signage out front, it is however well worth the trouble, as we found out on Sunday.
Looking for a convenient spot to meet on Sunday, the Lemon Tree was suggested and [...]