Crunchy Granola Bars

Keeping with the New Years theme of trying to be healthier and fitter, I decided it’s time to make granola bars. I love granola bars. I think they are the perfect snack. Healthy but just a bit indulgent. Win-win all round. Having made loads of different granola bar recipes over the last few years, I had hit on the perfect recipe last year. However, me being me, I lost the recipe. (Yes, I know. Its ridiculous. I’ve spent the better part of the last few months kicking myself.) Meanwhile Atul had been asking for these – only about a gazillion times. The only way to rectify the situation and regain my self-respect seemed that I puzzle out the recipe again.

My new favourite way with mushrooms

My grandmother (called chaachi by her siblings, children and grandchildren alike) was a formidable force in our family. In her white mundu, cotton top and large hoops of gold that dangled from her ears, she was ever the gracious, devout Syrian Catholic matriarch – Mother of 9 strapping lads and 2 girls, this was the real grip that kept the family, home, hearth and plantation going. Each of her kids regarded her with a mixture of fear, reverence and love. Each seemed convinced that s/he was the one she had a special bond with, her secret favourite. She had a proverb for every situation, advice for every concern, solution to every problem. What’s more, farm hands, cousins, neighbours..all sought out her secret Ayurvedic ‘green’ remedies to drive away pains, heal wounds and cure secret illnesses. To my young, citified eyes, chaachi was a rather intimidating figure. More the busy disciplinarian than the dada dadi ki kahaaniyaan type of grandmother, she was the last word on all things to do with farming, Catholicism, and upbringing of cattle and kids. And yet she was our last resort to get what we wanted out of our parents. If chaachi had agreed to a jaunt we had planned, no elder would ever have the guts to refute.

Nostalgia and Kaddu ki khatti meethi sabzi

I find that most of my quests around food date back to something I dreamt of or tasted in my childhood. Infact don’t we spend much of our adult life recreating or searching for themes from our childhood? This dish for me, quintessential UP fare, is my way of bringing back all those afternoons and holidays I spent at Sharma aunty’s house.

Asia gave me wings. And Banh Xeo.

I love these steamed bao buns found all over Malaysia and Singapore. And red bean paste and BBQ chicken are as good as they come

Having grown up reading, much of my cooking inspiration came from the books I read. And since most of that was European or at any rate western, all those tea parties, fairy food, jam tarts, lemonades and the like are to answer for my incessant desire to eat, cook, bake, experience western cuisines (and my girth). On the other hand, I always considered Asian food to be vaguely but politely uninteresting. How foolish, blind and delusional was I.

This image from a street in Penang is one of my favourite from last year and for me quintessential Penang.

Kokonda and learnings for a gluten and dairy free life

This new gluten free life has lead to a whole bunch of new things.  Everyday it gets more and more obvious that my previous best friends gluten and dairy were stabbing me in the back all the while that we were swinging hands happily making bread and slathering them with herbed butter. Since I’ve turned my back on them, my allergies have all but disappeared, stomach ailments and breathing problems I have dealt with for a long time now are miraculously receding, skin texture has changed, hair is better and I’m losing weight. So it’s really not all bad at all.