When my closest friends moved countries, I was the recipient of a lot of goodwill, a lot of love, a lot of memories and a lot of stuff from their pantry. Upali passed on these limes and I very happily accepted them as Kaffir Limes despite them not having the ridgy exterior that kaffir limes have. I kept calling them kaffir limes till after a point even I  realized the distinctive kaffir lime aroma was missing. Something, my brother kept mentioning over and over again... 'But it doesn't have thaaaattt... like you know the last time you made it...'

Update from Upali: These limes are called Gondho Lebu in Bengali and they travelled all the way from Calcutta to my cake. Thanks so much Upli!

This is going to be a long post. Not because of a recipe actually. More because now that I've got a platform to say something, I really want to say something I've got on my mind.


It all started with that Indira Nooyi article. I'm sure you've all read it. Well, if you're Indian and you're on Facebook, you have. After all, she's the most famous Indian female in the corporate world. Someone all girls in the country are supposed to look up to. We don't have too many idols besides movie stars and rubbish politicians. Then she comes out with a story how women can't have it all. I guess we're all caught up in Sheryl Sandberg's 'Lean In'. Frankly I don't have the inclination to listen to either of them. I maybe female, I could belong to the working class, but we all have our battles and no two of them are the same. But none of this matters to me. What mattered most to me in Indira Nooyi's article was the milk incident.

These are not regular bananas. These are the other bananas, the big long ones from Kerala. You also get them in Cuba, Nigeria and I think Miami cos that's what Jon Favreau picked up in the movie 'Chef' and he called them plantains!!!
Do ya hear me people??? Plantains!!!! I grew up calling these bananas plantains till I was very properly corrected by my sister and my friend that no, they are bananas.

I have a theory that if you are writing down a recipe, you better write it down the first time. Or by the time you get around to writing it down, you've played around with the original one so many times that you've completely lost the plot.


This is my case for poaching pears. The first time I poached pears, I measured water, I measured wine, I measure orange juice, I counted cinnamon sticks, I basically had everything in hand. These days I throw everything in together in saucepan and pray it does the job. Almost always it does, which goes to prove, yes, sometimes you don't have to be that perfect and creepily crazy about everything.

Sometimes I wonder if I'm crazy to put up something as simple as a frozen yoghurt. But it doesn't seem so crazy when I remember that I actually went and read up on a lot of frozen yoghurt recipes to finally make one.

If you're like me and haven't invested in an ice-cream maker, please read 'How to Make Ice-Cream without a Machine' by David Lebovitz

I have a block.. well several... but primarily, I find it difficult to cook in kitchens not my own. I should say baking cos its not something where I can throw spices willy nilly and make things alright. I try to avoid it but its not always easy saying no to my baker genes. So when I'm in an unfamiliar kitchen like I am now, I want to bake something which I can make blindly and still get something really yum to satiate those cravings. Its also summer and I'm on a fruit binge which makes things easier. I made a Banana, Orange and Pineapple Fresh Fruit Cake which I forgot to take a picture of. So yeah, no recipe for that yet.