I grew up in the culinary wastelands of Luton. My love of good food came from my parents and family friends. Not only did mum teach herself to cook dishes from around the world, we also encountered all kinds of new tastes and techniques whilst travelling overseas during the holidays. My dad enjoyed eating out ... Read more »
There is no greater compliment I can give to a restaurant serving North Indian food than that it reminds me of my mum’s home cooking. So it’s not an accolade I give lightly. It is one I give to Delhi Grill having finally made my way to this new Chapel Market Indian restaurant in Angel ... Read more »
A little skeptical about Michelin’s standards after our recent meal at Holbeck Ghyll I was nonetheless curious to visit Quilon, an Indian restaurant in the heart of Westminster that I’d heard very little about. Familiar with a wide range of Northern Indian dishes (well, I would be, wouldn’t I? This is my mum’s website) I ... Read more »
In one of life’s odd little coincidences I was telling someone about “dishum dishum films” just a day or two before I first heard about Dishoom, a new London restaurant modelled on Bombay Cafés. Dishum or dishoom, however you wish to spell it, is the Indian version of Kapow! – that exaggerated noise when a ... Read more »
You know how people sometimes talk about second generation immigrants as slightly lost souls – neither entirely comfortable in the land from whence their parents came nor completely integrated into the land of their birth? Well, that’s not me. I was born in London in the early seventies to two doctors who emigrated from India ... Read more »
This easy sausage curry is a one-pot, easy-peasy, inauthentic-but-tasty recipe is I created during my student days. Throughout that day, I dreamed happily of the dinner I planned to make that evening, secure in the knowledge that I’d already done the shopping the day before and everything I needed was waiting for me in the shared ... Read more »
My family call this sauce imli (tamarind) chutney. The word chutney comes from the Hindi chaatni which describes a tangy condiment that makes you lick your lips at it’s flavour! Although the verb chaatna means to lick I think lipsmacking is a better translation.. I refer to it as a ketchup or sauce because I’ve ... Read more »
Lemons in India are different – they’re lemony (well, duh!) but rounder with much thinner skins than the ones we see most commonly in the UK. Indians in the UK sometimes choose to use limes in place of Indian lemons when cooking, although my mum recommends against this as lime skins are much tougher than ... Read more »
The two chilli and ginger pickles I made for the stall I did at Covent Garden Real Food Market last year proved popular, so I made more for friends. This is adapted from recipes on Mamta’s Kitchen, our family recipe site. ... Read more »
When my sister and I were kids, we’d fight over the marrow bones in mum’s lamb curry. Mum would usually make it with leg or shoulder of lamb, which she’d have the butcher cut into large pieces, with the bones left in. The marrow managed to retain it’s distinct oleaginous texture and taste whilst also ... Read more »
The Place of Onions, in old Lille. After last night’s rainstorm the intense sticky heat has broken and today is cool, breezy, fresh… I love it! A drop of… [more]
We went to Star Wars: Secrets of the Empire at The Void this morning, an amazing VR experience where we got to be Rebel Alliance members going undercover as… [more]