Chef at Large

I cooked this for dinner yesterday. It’s interesting what innovative dishes you come up with, when you don’t really have a choice of cooking implements or ingredients.
Looking up my inventory, I chopped up some courgettes, spring onions, potatoes, smoked sausage, mushrooms and french beans. Heated some oil, fried a little cumin seed, added some finely [...]

Hello All - After much travelling, switches and toil I’ve reached the land of crumpets, scones and double cream. On the flight, I found I was tagged as a ‘Hindu’ and consequently, I was on the receiving end of ’special’ meals. Translate that as stuff with no eggs or meat. Mostly cabbage and potatoes with [...]

During interactions with many North Indian friends, I find many are interested in trying out fish dishes at home, but they simply aren’t sure how to cook it. Most are quite comfortable with chicken and meat dishes, but with fish they’re like… pardon the pun, a fish out of water.
This dish is easy to cook, [...]

We picked up some fresh prawns from INA market and for some reason, I wanted to cook them in a coconut gravy - so much that I could actually taste and smell them the way I wanted it.We usually pick up fresh, unpeeled prawns from the market, then Cherie and I sit down to the [...]

Watching a travel program this evening motivated me to run into the kitchen and start doing *something*, not knowing exactly what I was going to end up with.
I started by cutting a few slices off a gourd and sauteing them in a little olive oil. Next came the tuna, which was steamed, shredded, seasoned with [...]

Going by Toni’s recipe of a few days back, I thought of trying it at home. Problem was, I couldn’t find lamb or fresh rosemary. So, decided to follow procedure and change the ingredients. Here’s what finally hapenned:

Find a pan large enough to hold leg
Fill water, place on heat and add bay leaf, turmeric, salt, [...]

I found these lovely, smooth skinned and firm potatoes at the vegetable market yesterday and thought up this recipe just to use them! I also found some onion stalks with the buds on. If you haven’t seen these, they look like spring onion stalks, only they’re thicker, firmer, totally hollow and quite long, with a [...]

My mother had always been very fond of cooking. My father on the other hand loved to eat good food and was a voracious eater. (Very early in life I learnt that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.) As for me, I intensely disliked food and the dining table was a [...]

Vermicelli is a popular breakfast food in South India. Cooked in sesame oil with chopped onions turmeric, salt, chilli, black mustard seeds and curry leaves, it tastes wonderful. Even better if you have a little mullagapudi - a hot concoction of spices that is mixed with oil and used as a condiment. Also called ‘gunpowder’ [...]

My grandfather was fond of entertaining and often had European guests over for lunch or dinner. Mammu’s stews were an instant hit and often they would invite themselves over to taste them over again. Herein is her recipe for Mutton Stew.
Mutton Stew           

Half a kilo of mutton
One onion sliced fine
A piece of ginger about one [...]