Food & Recipes

Introduction: The 6 AM Ritual In our South Delhi flat, winter mornings had a sound before they had a light. It was the sound of my mother pressing dough against the tawa — a soft rhythmic thud that meant it was cold outside, school was still an hour away, and aloo paratha was happening. She made them without measuring anything. A handful of this, a pinch of that, her hands moving with the confidence of someone who had done this ten thousand times. The parathas came off the tawa glistening with white butter — the kind that comes in a small clay pot from the local dairy, not the yellow block from the supermarket. I never appreciated those mornings until I left home, tried to make aloo paratha in a Pune paying guest accommodation on a single-burner stove, and produced something that looked like a deflated football and tasted like regret. This recipe is everything I learned after years of practice — and several conversations with my mother in which I finally asked her to actually measure things while I wrote them down. What Makes a Good Aloo … Read more

Introduction: The Butter Chicken My Nani Made Every Sunday in our Bandra flat, the smell of butter chicken would drift through all three floors of our chawl. My Nani — God bless her — never once called it “murgh makhani.” To her, it was simply “woh laal chicken.” That red chicken. The one that made grown men queue at the kitchen door with rotis already in hand. The version you get at restaurants — silky, sweet, and uniform — is not what she made. Hers had texture. It had char. It had a slight bitterness from where the tomatoes caught the bottom of the kadai. And it was, without question, the best thing I have ever eaten. This article is my attempt to give you that recipe. The real one. With the things that go wrong, the shortcuts that ruin it, and the one step most recipes leave out that makes all the difference. What Makes Authentic Butter Chicken Different Restaurant butter chicken is engineered for mass production — it is smooth, consistent, and deliberately mild so it offends no one. Home-style butter chicken is the opposite. It … Read more

Introduction: Puran Poli and the Smell of Festivals In Maharashtra, there is a particular smell that means a festival is coming. It arrives a day early, the afternoon before Holi or Ganesh Chaturthi or any of the auspicious days my grandmother consulted her panchang to identify. It is the smell of chana dal cooking with jaggery — sweet and slightly caramelised and unmistakably festive. Puran poli is not everyday food. It is celebration food. And the making of it is itself ceremonial. The whole family gathers. Someone sits with the dal. Someone rolls. Someone stands at the tawa. The kitchen becomes the living room. Everything important happens there. My aunt made the best puran poli I have ever had. Her secret was patience — more time on the dal than any recipe suggests, more ghee than is arguably sensible, and a dough that rested for a full hour. Here is that recipe. Ingredients (Makes 10–12 polis) For the puran (sweet filling): — 1 cup chana dal (split Bengal gram) — 1 cup + 2 tbsp jaggery, grated (adjust to taste — some prefer it sweeter) — 1/2 tsp … Read more

Introduction: The Breakfast That Requires No Introduction Ask anyone from Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, or Gujarat what they eat for breakfast on a normal weekday and the answer is, with very high probability, poha. It is the breakfast that requires no occasion, no planning, and no advance preparation. Everything needed is already in the kitchen. It takes fifteen minutes if you are unhurried and ten if you are running late. I first ate proper poha in Indore. I had eaten poha before — or what I thought was poha, the version made in Mumbai dabbas that is pale yellow, slightly dry, and served with a wedge of lemon that you squeeze and forget about. Then in Indore I sat at a small stall near Sarafa Bazaar at seven in the morning and the man behind the counter handed me a plate that was a completely different thing: turmeric-yellow, fragrant with curry leaves, topped with fine sev, a scattering of pomegranate seeds, and a squeeze of fresh lime. There was a small bowl of green chutney alongside. I ate two plates. I asked him what he did differently. He looked … Read more

Introduction: Sunday Has a Smell In every North Indian household I have ever visited — Delhi, Chandigarh, Lucknow, Jalandhar, Dehradun — Sunday morning has the same smell. It is not incense. It is not fresh bread. It is rajma, quietly cooking on the back burner since before anyone woke up, filling the flat with the deep, earthy smell of kidney beans and onion and whole spices that have been simmering together for hours. Rajma chawal is the most democratic dish in North India. It is made in tiny one-room kitchens and in large farmhouse stoves. It costs almost nothing and tastes like it cost everything. It is what you eat after a long week of eating out and remembering you actually prefer home food. It is what you want when you are homesick. It is, for a very large number of people I know, the dish that tastes most like their mother. My mother made rajma every Sunday without exception for eighteen years. I do not remember ever being bored of it. I do remember the one Sunday she ran out of rajma and made chole instead and … Read more

Introduction: The Jar on the Kitchen Shelf Every Indian home of a certain generation had a pickle shelf. Ours was in the kitchen, near the window that got afternoon sun. There were always at least four jars — a lime one, a mixed vegetable one, some namkeen that had been there since possibly before my birth, and the aam ka achar. The mango pickle was the one we rationed. My mother made it only once a year, in April, when raw Rajapuri mangoes appeared in the Crawford Market. She would buy five kilos, supervise the cutting, and then take over completely for the spicing. The rest of us watched. We were not permitted to help. We did not understand why until we were adults and understood how easy it is to ruin a jar of pickle through one wet spoon. This recipe is hers, written down properly for the first time. The Right Mangoes — This Step Is Critical Not every raw mango works for pickle. You want raw, completely unripe mangoes that are firm, tart, and have thick skins. Varieties that work well: Rajapuri, Totapuri, Langda (when … Read more

Introduction: The Rs. 15 That Feeds a City If you want to understand Mumbai, do not go to Marine Drive at sunset. Go to any railway station at 8am and watch a thousand office-goers eat vada pav while standing, while running, while somehow managing to also check their phones and argue with someone on the other end of the line. Vada pav is not just food. It is infrastructure. It is what keeps this city moving. My first memory of vada pav is from Dadar station — age seven, holding my father’s hand, being handed a vada pav wrapped in old newspaper. The garlic chutney stained the paper orange. The vada was crisp on the outside and pillowy inside. The pav was slightly sweet. Together, they were perfect. Every Mumbaikar has their vada pav origin story. Here is the recipe that comes closest to that memory. Ingredients (Makes 8 vada pavs) For the batata vada (potato filling): — 4 large potatoes, boiled and mashed (about 600g after mashing) — 2 tbsp oil — 1 tsp mustard seeds — 1/2 tsp turmeric — 8–10 curry leaves — 3 green … Read more

Introduction: Every Family Has One Correct Dal There is a quiet but extremely serious debate that happens in Indian families. It is never spoken aloud directly. It exists in the raised eyebrow when you taste someone else’s dal. It exists in the polite “achha hai” — it’s fine — which means it is absolutely not fine. The debate is this: whose dal is best? In our family, the answer was my father’s mother. Her dal tadka had a specific quality that no one could quite replicate — a depth that came from long cooking, a smoke from the ghee and whole spices, and a texture that was neither thick nor thin but exactly right. She is gone now. But I have spent years reverse-engineering her dal, and this recipe is as close as I have come. I will also explain the science of what each step does, because understanding why makes you a better cook. Which Dal? And Why Dal tadka is traditionally made with arhar dal (toor dal / split pigeon peas). Some cooks mix it with chana dal for a slightly earthier flavour and better texture … Read more

Introduction: India’s Most Misunderstood Drink Every Indian home makes chai differently. This is a fact that is not understood by anyone who has only ever ordered “masala chai” at a café, received a teabag in hot water with a sachet of masala powder, and thought: this must be what Indians drink. What Indians drink is something made on the stove, in a small saucepan, with real milk — full-fat, not skimmed — and whole spices that have been cracked or crushed before going in. It is simmered, not steeped. It is poured from height to create froth. It is drunk from small glasses, not large mugs. My grandmother’s chai was the benchmark. She made it four times a day — morning, mid-morning, afternoon, early evening. Same recipe each time, same two cups, same small saucepan that she had been using since before I was born. The inside of that saucepan was permanently stained the colour of strong tea and she considered this a mark of character. Here is the recipe, with the ratio she finally agreed to measure out when I asked her to. Understanding the Ratio — … Read more