Bombay Foodie

I stole the title from Joy the Baker . For this title was what made me bookmark this recipe, then go back to look at it last few weeks and finally make a dinner of it tonight. Because even recipes with a single egg yield enough pancakes to feed crowds, Joy's recipe omits the egg and yet comes up with a fluffy pancake. The best pancake I've ever eaten, in fact. I omitted bananas and chocolate chips in favor of the only fruit heaven made for pancakes - fresh blueberries. Then I topped my pancake with vanilla pastry cream and blackcurrant coulis. And now I am headed to a dream world. You head to Joy's for the recipe, and make this for breakfast tomorrow!

You know I love Indo-Chinese. But I have several complaints against the generic hakka noodles sold at all these places. I don't like cabbage, I can't stand capsicum and I wish they wouldn't put any carrots in my noodles. And while we are it, couldn't they cut the noodles a little shorter so I'm not twirling them on my fork forever. I guess no one else's gonna make their noodles to suit my preference, so I ended up making my own. And for the first time, thanks to ecurry, I got noodles that are a pretty close approximation of the neighborhood Chinese joint. I, of course, skipped the vegetables in the original recipe and went for spinach, broccoli and asparagus. For everything else, look at the original version .

Bombay's street foods come in more shapes than one. In a hurry, buy a vada pao on your way out of the station. On the beach, stick to the pao bhaji or the icy gola. But when you need comfort food, something hot and buttery and filling, its the grilled sandwich. Since all it takes is some bread and vegetables and a hand held grill, you will see grilled sandwich stalls at every corner. But I take you to the best there is : the sandwich wallah in Santacruz. This is college street, next to Mithibai and NM Colleges, the place where countless students come for succor. Can't make it here and want to create your own Bombay Grill? Here's the lowdown on everyone's favorite sandwich. First, you need Wibs White Sandwich Bread. It can't be any other brand, they never ever use anything else. Unless you count that Britannia loaf, a concession to those health freaks looking for brown bread. But you want healthy, you should look elsewhere - this bread just got doused with a l...

What's the deal : I am cooking my way through the dinner menu of Indigo restaurant. These are not Indigo recipes; I haven't eaten or even seen any of these dishes. This is my interpretation based only on the name of the dish. Indigo menu says: Chive Gnocchi Leek Saffron Cream Gnocchi, a name that terrifies most Italian cooks. Easy recipe that's extremely hard to get right, gnocchi has been the undoing of several good Italian restaurants for me. Traditionally made with potatoes, gnocchi should be light and flavorful. You wish! The ones I've had so far have been heavy and not worth it. But then, a few months back, the daring cooks did a ricotta gnocchi. Even first time gnocchi makers were all praises, so that's the one I decided to do. If life was so easy...I've been unable to buy chives anywhere this past month. So, instead of going on looking, I decided to replace it with sage. Oh! and there's no saffron. Nor is there likely to be any saffron in any o...

A couple of years back, my friend sent me a mail. "This woman dumped the guy a day before their wedding because he wanted to get rid of her books. You HAVE to read this!". That evening, I went to my neighborhood bookstore and made my first acquaintance with the residents of Guernsey Islands. And not just any residents, these were the people who had just been through several years of German occupation and were now just getting used to living their lives again. It's 1946, and one of these people gets writing to our heroine, author of several books and living in London. From then on, the lives of Juliet and the people of Guernsey intertwine. What the book manages to do, in a series of letters (for that's how it's written from start to end), is bring the war closer to our lives. It talks of soldiers and the people of the captured island not as enemies, but as humans who each have been given a role to play. I don't say this often, but as I read this book the t...

Do you routinely buy bananas and then leave them to brown on the counter. Then, not knowing what to do, someone like me would throw them away. But one day I was reading a food blog and it insisted I could convert these bananas into icecream . I know, I didn't believe it either. But I had them up for slaughter anyway and it didn't seem like any effort. So I peeled a couple of bananas and sliced them thinly. Off these went to the freezer for a few hours. Once frozen, I put them in the blender and they went from being frozen bananas to a soft creamy icecream. The transformation is so unbelievable you have to do it yourself or you will think it will never happen. No dairy, no added sugar - if you are in the game for guilt free icecreams, this is for you!