MY (FOOD) BLOG

No one likes to deal with those dirty dishes yet these are intrinsic to cooking… My first memories around preparing food and all the fascinating kitchen politics around it, was a song I made up age 3 or 4 when living in Santiniketan (West-Bengal, India). Mimlu, my prolific creative mother, an outstanding story-teller, and Paban, my second father, a no less genius baul singer, musician, song-writer, painter, would often quarrel about whose turn it was to wash the dishes. A uni

We just got back from Colombia which is, without a doubt, one of the most beautiful countries I have traveled to, offering a head spinning variety in nature, landscapes, flora and fauna. It is home to over 400 different fruit varieties. A plentiful paradise with a difficult history and an impressively resilient, fun loving and kind population. Colombian food boasts quite a variety of finger licking dishes summarized further below, including some travel tips, Colombian spots i

Punishment Sisyph (wikimedia image) Vatel, Loiseau, Bourdain… do these names ring a bell? As a cook and food tour guide, reading up as I like to do on the history of gastronomy, I couldn’t help but wonder at the striking similarity of the tragic destinies of all 3 incredibly talented men who ended their own lives exhausted by what seems to be a doomed Sisyphus race for perfection or fulfillment (included further below a short bio for each of them). Without claiming their grea

When I look into the origins of French religious celebrations and traditions, many seem to have morphed over time into yet another now mostly secular excuse to eat or drink some delicacy or other. Perhaps it is just my own food obsessed brain that sees nothing else. Nevertheless, no sooner had our livers started recovering from Christmas excesses and the January junta of the galette des rois, some even trying a dry January cleanse, that we are summoned through all-pervading m

King or queen for a day? Another French food tradition that baffles me, Galette des rois. My dislike of Beaujolais nouveau is paralleled only by that for the galette des rois, a common form of which is puff pastry and a frangipane (almond paste) and cream filling. Beyond the fact that it is probably the king of heavyweight pastries, the timing confounds me, as this happens early January, right after all the end of year celebrations and their accompanying excessive feasts, fin

As a multicultural Parisian foodie, some French traditions do baffle me, numero uno, Beaujolais nouveau. It’s just not very good. I just don’t get it. Beaujolais Nouveau tradition started in the mid-20th century. Most winemakers would celebrate the end of harvest by sampling an early taste of the new vintage but none as effectively as Beaujolais nouveau since it expanded beyond the wineries to the region and then to the rest of France and the world in the 80s, thanks to a suc

Last week I was clearly in a nostalgic mood so I made madeleines, financiers and khao suey (see photos below). The baking reminded me of when I trained for my French state cooking diploma. While training, the chef explained to us how it was so vastly different from the pastry diploma. For one, cooks are not allowed to use machines like the pastry blender and must know how to do everything with rudimentary tools and elbow oil (“huile de coude”), in other words physical strengt