Travelling by taste-bud

One of the nicer perks of being in, or having a parent or spouse in academia is the opportunity to meet and befriend people from cultures, ethnicities and nationalities very different from your own. If a major purpose of university education is to ‘open up’ a person’s mind to possibilities hitherto unexplored –  whether in the realm of subatomic particles, or the reinterpretation of obscure pre-modern philosophy (take your pick really! Its all there, mostly funded by your tax money thank you ) – then, being part of a really diverse mix of people really aids that process in subtle and beautiful ways.

The icing on this knowing-diverse-people cake has to be the part where you get invited to someone’s house for a meal to taste ‘their’ cuisine, or when they bring you back a little something from their trips back home.

A quick example of how this process has worked to make the grey matter swell in our crania : Rosolje (ROS-OL-YE — ‘Ros’- like Rose, the flower; ‘ol’- like ‘ole’ in ‘hole’; and’ je’ like ‘ye’ in ‘yesterday’)

Pretty Pink!

Should you flip a frittata?

This cold and lazy (cozy?) winter’s morning, found us waking up to New-Year’s-eve pressure, not having any exciting plans for the last day of 2010.  By the time noon came around, we had resigned to the prospect of watching fireworks at midnight with a friendly hand-out of oliebollen at the town square. But getting to that conclusion had us ravenously hungry. Which is when we decided on making a frittata for brunch. What is a frittata you ask? Like all good bloggers, we could link you to wikipedia, but will suffice by saying that its a ginormous omelette with stuff in it!

The recipe we decided to adopt is this one for a spinach and potato frittata. Every thing proceeded according to plan more or less (the potatoes cooked readily, the spinach and garlic additions added wonderful aroma and texture, and the eggs and milk made a fluffy cloud of appetizing goodness – the latter a sight I had never seen before). And then popped the question – which will surely bother you too if you enter the frittata fray – should I flip the darn thing? If yes, HOW??

Frittata : Flipped, and Un-flipped

Songs of the season

Seasons Greetings!

I never quite understood that term as a child.

Since I was one of those shut-brain dufuses who put what the ‘teacher’ at ‘school’ said above my own thoughts and ideas – ‘season’ meant Summer, Winter and Monsoon (“India has three seasons”) or Rabi and Kharif (“India has two growing seasons”) — and now that I think back, I feel insanely thankful that my childhood predates IPL (“Dhoni is the guy to watch out for this season”) and the Fashion weeks,  (“Cerulean is the colour this season daahling”) not to mention my obsession with watching food television (“we’ll season this with a dry jamaican jerk rub”)

In any case, even with the first of those interpretations of ‘season’, I was always a bit at sea…because December weather where I lived, was a hint of winter in the morning and night, blazing summer for the rest of the day, and if the rain-bearing clouds blowing over Chennai came farther than their intended destination,  a little bit of monsoon once in a while.

I actually understood the term ‘Holiday Season’ only a couple of years ago, when an (american) friend was explaining it to his 6 year old.