Panfusine

Some days, you wake up to the regular routines & chores in life (& beating ones head over the kitchen table about this weeks food  inspiration) without a clue how the day will turn out..  & 12 hrs later you're clueless about how delightfully surprising the day turned out to be (and you're back to smacking your head about which one of the myriad inspirations you want to tackle first!) Tuesday Sept. 20, Took off impulsively to  Bobby Flay's book signing event at Williams Sonoma in Short Hills NJ. These book signings in general, require a lot of pre planning:  pre-ordering the book via phone, getting there 3 hours in advance & wait in a long serpentine queue. This time I struck it lucky, it definitely was well worth it. The scrumptious samples, highlighting recipes from the book, that the store prepares fresh & brings around.. ah well, scroll thru the pics & see for yourself before I hit you with this weeks recipe, adapted from ...

The Shiva Temple in the village of Kalakkad Note to self: repeat Note to self:    When traveling within Rural India, Its waaay better to drive than take the train!! This is what happens when you base yourself in the US of A & miss out on whats been happening back in the home country. They have great national highways that get you from point A to point B in great time with decent enough gas station rest rooms en route. Still accustomed to the old ways of traveling by train, we went on to book tickets on the Nellai express (yeah yeah AC 1 the highest class possible on the train, still). Kids loved it, didn't mind the griminess too much and the berths made for a great monkey bar substitute to climb up and down. but its hard for grown ups to get reused to something one has merrily gotten unused to! So here we were on a hot & dry late August morning , at Tirunelveli Junction picked up by a pre-arranged car (an air conditioned Toyota SUV)  & dr...

Yea Yea... like many other blogs, I too should be writing a post on Ganesh chaturthi, being in India while this festival is on in full swing, especially since i have a LOT of cute photographs of the 'modak' making process AND numerous varieties of the delightful snacks. Trust me to take off in a different direction! but then writing a blog is all about what excites you, isn't it? Stumbled upon Punjab grill through my aunt's recommendation, returning from Bannerghatta National Park   ( Not much by way of natural wildlife, but they run a respectable conservation effort to preserve tigers, Asiatic lions & sloth bears) To Indian readers, J. Inder Singh Kalra (better known as 'Jiggs' Kalra) needs no introduction. A journalist by profession and former food columnist at the Times of India, He's been involved with food in the Indian media, the same way Mark Bittmann has been doing so through the NY times (except that Jiggs Kalra precedes Bittman by ab...