Chili with chocolate and chorizo

I am not sure if this dish will get the love it deserves. It’s not pretty. Definitely not photogenic. And there aren’t any pictures for me to show you how luscious the texture is. How thick and dark it is when plated. What’s more, this is chocolate and meat! Everyone loves these two separately and yet most people will wrinkle their noses and shake their head in disgust at the thought of their pairing. But this doomed couple – I tell you, they make a great pair. You may call me kooky, but I think chocolate has a lot to bring to this marriage. Anyway, I love kooky, and the mole was one of the first dishes on this blog. And I bet being paired with meat makes chocolate feel good too. Who wouldn’t get bored of being slotted?

Some rooting and my favourite Mutton Curry

There are some days for me when NOTHING hits the spot like a really good Indian curry. Not a generic add an MDH masala curry but the real deal. Made from scratch. Like a good fish curry. Mom style. Red, fiery, coconutty, tangy…with shiny curry leaves, crackling mustard seeds and plenty of spice.

Life Changing Meatloaf

I am going to cut to the chase quickly on this one. Last week I baked meatloaf. It changed me forever. I discovered that the online mafia and everyone else (not sure who these people are) who say that meatloaves are dry tasteless bricks lie. Only Caroline is right. Meatloaves can be manna. A good one transformative. A great one.. can turn the house into an asylum.

Soul Onion Soup with Meatball and Spaghetti

Long ago, when at college, there was a time when I was obsessed with caramelised onions and french onion soup. I had just bought an encyclopaedia of vegetables on sale (which was the only way a pauper student could have afforded it) and the pictures of the beautiful onions turning from white to pink to gold to brown tantalised me. Just the technique of cooking onions slowly, lovingly  for about an hour in which they transformed to a beautiful sweet gold seemed so enticing that it became something of a religion with me. Time consuming and a great way to get away from campus life, I escaped into French onion nirvana (I also obsessively made plum jam, chinese fried noodles and caramel pop-corn…all in a mini hostel room in the make believe world of design school). Having made and consumed enough soup while listening to Simon and Garfunkel’s ‘I am a rock’ and mending my constantly broken heart in those fool-hardy days, I never caramalised onions again for the last 10 years.

Yummy dinner chicken salad

I have this memory of eating some amazing Chicken Salad at the Auroville Visitors Center Cafe. Ever since then I have been trying to recreate it without getting as close as I would like. While there is no reason why mayo, chicken and potatoes thrown together in any format will not taste good, I haven’t quite hit the exact taste I remember. This week I tried yet another recipe. Here is what I found..