Hyderabadi Bagara Baigan: Eggplant Curry In a Peanut Sauce

In my last post, I described my general love of all things eggplant and gave a recipe for a Chinese way of cooking them. In my litany of international ways with eggplant with which I am not only familiar but also adore, I left out one very important subcontinent: India. That’s because I wanted to [...]

Making Flaky, Tender, Delicious Chapati

The very first chapati I ever had was not very good. Mind you, it was made by an American friend whose cooking skills were less than impressive, from a recipe from an American vegetarian cookbook (one of the older ones where the recipes tended toward the “less-than-delicious vegetarian glop dishes” that used to be the [...]

Carola: Simply Good Potatoes

“Carola” is one of my favorite all-time potato varieties. Which might seem weird to some folks–I mean, a potato is a potato, right? Well, no. At least when it comes to locally grown or home-grown potatoes, there are distinct flavor and texture differences between potato varieties. The same can not always be said of supermarket [...]

Lamb With Cilantro and Curry Leaf Sauce

I like to play with cooking techniques when I come up with new dishes. For example–I like to take the French techniques I learned in culinary school and apply them to other cuisines. Usually what happens is I end up with a recipe that tastes both traditional and sublime–the flavors of the original cuisine are [...]

Indian-Appalachian Fusion: Spiced Creamed Peas and New Potatoes (With an Aside on the Creative Process)

I always knew it was early summer when creamed peas and new potatoes appeared on Grandma’s dining room table. Peas and new potatoes are ready at the same exact time, so there’s the seasonal reason the two are classically paired; it just also happens that the two taste perfect and heavenly together, much better than [...]