food

  • First time Nihari

    Off for Taraweeh prayers, while this bowl of Nihari waits for my return. While in Delhi, it’s usual to have it with tandoori roti, it’s the qulcha in these parts. Which interestingly, is nothing like the kulcha that’s had with matar as a quick lunch-snack under a tree’s shade in Delhi. Let’s hope I have…

  • Lemon life

    When life gives you lemons…you probably forgot to look at the plums behind your back. Of all fruits, it’s probably the guava which is most missed at each Iftar. For what is a fruit chat minus the soft fleshiness with right tartness amrood.

  • You say Potato

    Trouble with the potato is its ubiquity. Have a look at the spread of snacks at any do, and chances are a third of the ingredients would be potato. Baked, fried, dried, boiled. Which brings back to the trouble. Every potato snack that’s local to some place in India isn’t unique to that region alone….

  • Birthday cake

    Yeah yeah, cake isn’t exactly Iftari. But then, what the what when there’s a birthday or two in the family. That’s chocolate and orange and peaches and plum. Yum.

  • Soot Pheni

    The first day of fasting has come to an end. As is customary, it involved a test of courage while navigating through the dastarkhwaan laid out for Iftar. I wanted to be left in a state where the casual stroll to the mosque for Maghrib prayers wouldn’t feel impossible. The time between Maghrib and Ish’a stays difficult….

  • Day 6: Of Food, Cannons, Red Sandstone and Mars

    Another evening, another exit from a mosque. And another pat on the shoulder. Rather an arm around the shoulder. I was too busy looking at the image preview on my camera, so I didn’t pay much attention thinking it was one of the friends who was following me down the stairs out of the mosque….

  • Day 5: It isn’t just brick and mortar which crumble

    Anybody moving around South Delhi would at some point cross that flyover plus major junction known as Chirag Dilli, situated on one of the arterial roads which cut across Delhi. The name always gave out that the place had some historical significance – I could never find the time to know more about it. Till…

  • Day 4: Chicken Qorma for the Soul

    I almost missed out on being in time for Iftar today. Yes, I almost did. And I don’t have anything else to blame but my ever confused mind, which just keeps on throwing up multiple choices at me, and never is it the case that out of the options available, only one is the right…

  • Day 3: In the horde, there is always that one face

    Someone calling out my name, a tap on the shoulder. I turn around and see that it’s Farrukh Bhai, complete with wife and kid. Now I haven’t seen Farrukh Bhai in ages – last I remember it was around the time his kid was a toddler, and now he looked like a kid who was…

  • Day 2: Ramadan has begun. Officially.

    After yesterday (and the splitting headache which accompanied the wait till Suhoor), I had made up my mind that I’m definitely not going to adhere to the philosophy of eating light at Iftar. Plus in a way, Ramadan had ‘officially’ not kicked in for me yet. There is a fairly popular anecdote in the region…