At the beginning of the year, I started thinking about signature dishes: the food you keep going back to over and over again, that you might pull out for the odd dinner party (pre-Great Global Upheaval), or for a just-because nice occasion. I asked this question of my siblings. What were their signature dishes? And,…
Author: goelvrashi
a khau galli fried rice memory
Sometimes you really just want some goddamned comfort food. I once woke up to a decidedly not-positive email, and wanted to eat my feelings. You’re familiar with these: the ones that have you reaching for the tub of ice cream when you’re sad, angry, happy—okay, anything, really. Let’s just acknowledge that sugar is addictive and…
pardon my turkey day food coma
Well, that and The Great British Baking Show (Yesss Peter!), both of which distracted me from humblebragging much, much earlier about our Thanksgiving Day* spread. A spread that fed three of us on the night, and then for two days after, even though we’d halved and quartered recipes and chosen others meant for two. American…
diwali 2020 was lit
Happy Diwali! For those of you who don’t know what Diwali is, it’s the Indian New Year, celebrated by, well, a pretty large chunk of the world. Yes, we observe a different new year, because the Hindu and many other South Asian religions follow a lunisolar (don’t ask, I don’t entirely get it myself) calendar…
mom’s famous pindi chhole
I have a fuzzy memory of this one time my dad asked my mom to make chhole for the millionth time. In my family, “chhole”, or channa, simply meant the gravy-simmered chickpea dish you generally see in Indian restaurants (fast food and regular), paired with bhature, the maida-based fried puffy bread, and sliced (not chopped,…
an ode: pav bhaji
Do you have favorites? A character, movie, scene, drive, trip, author, interaction, memory, whatever, that you enjoy above all others? I don’t. If you ask which insert-topic-here I like best, there’s a 99% chance I can’t tell you. Call it skepticism of the concept of timeless favorites, or plain indecision (who’re we kidding, though, we…
honey & harissa carrot salad
A friend asked in one of my group chats recently about how to scale a recipe for 15 portions down to 3. My brain immediately started trying to divide all the quarters and thirds and tablespoons and teaspoons by 5. (Shoutout to all the Kumon math alums, and our ability to think we’re human calculators…
the non-recipe green chutney recipe (mint & cilantro)
We grew up with a healthy suspicion of restaurant sauces. Chutney, saunth, achar—the kinds that come in packets or in bowls in the center of the tables in restaurants—all of these were too soupy, too synthetically hued, and carried great risk of making us fall sick. No, we turned up our noses at these, in…
pass the pepper 