It was a conversation with a friend’s octogenarian mother — a conversation that wandered back and forth, expanded and contracted over a couple of visits..

Writing about food has led to many unusual, enriching conversations, valuable friendships that I would never have made in the normal course of my life,..

Whenever we went on a picnic, there was always mor kool, wrapped up in wilted banana leaves. Never mind the more exotic, rich, dry-fried meats..

Tiny white neem flowers, exquisitely shaped and scented, looked forward to all year, barely had time to appear in their usual clouds of white and..

In the dry season, the hillsides are brown, the roads dusty. There is not even a hint of the lushness that will come with the..

Kodavathis of a generation or two before mine would have been surprised —if not disbelieving and mildly indignant —to see their favourite coconut toffee listed..

Every day of my life, I am conscious of taste. Each meal, each dish is thoroughly considered for taste —or the lack of it, sometimes..

When the first few stalks of paddy —still edged with green and pulsing with new life —have been ritually harvested, tied around a stone pillar..

  A cascade of slender, pink-tinged freshwater fish landed on my kitchen table in the early summer months of this year. The pile of tiny,..

When someone you know, who is eighty years old-or thereabouts -remembers their grandmother making the most perfect mulberry jam, in Madikeri, it’s a good guess..

  The scent of a bowl of ripening passion-fruit, purple skinned, or sometimes a deep orange-gold, is intoxicating -deep and sweet, pouring into the air..

We make a simmered broth that is a staple of the Coorg kitchen known simply by the quaint name of ‘Jug Soup’. For a long..

Generally speaking, a cooked chutney is far less complicated and time consuming to make than most traditional Indian pickles. Although Jane Grigson does mention that..