Suvir

Twenty Twenty - Facile discernment and the beginning of a new decade and year

2020 couldn’t begin on a better note for us. We find ourselves safely at home in New Delhi. Surrounded by loved ones. Pooches at our side. Living in a new home, built on land where the home of my birth existed before. Finding ourselves comfortable in the city that I left at 19, when I went to school in Manhattan. The city to which I came back yearly when going back home to family. A city that is as old as history and as richly diverse and full of opportunities as the best in the world. New Delhi is the capital of India, it is a cultural hub, and it is now home to my new baby, The House of Celeste, my restaurant in Gurgaon. 

Mandarin Trail: Pan Asian cuisine that leaves a trail of delicious memories

Having been spoiled by Ed Schoenfeld's incredible Red Farm in NYC, it is not easy for me to eat Chinese food with glee, anywhere else. His food is the stuff of midnight yearnings and insouciant cravings. Hunger that can only be sated with visits to Red Farm. 

How happy I am to report that Mandarin Trail in The Great India Place Mall, whilst not truly Chinese, has the kind of fare, that has had me return to a mall, to eat food, half a dozen times. Each time with yearning. Each time leaving me with a good feeling of full satiety.

Garlic Chutney: Made for Usha Bua (paternal aunt) with hopes to indulge her as she always does me

Usha Bua believes that garlic chutney is good for her health. Belief and faith are as important as fact and medicine to the overall goodness of our being. 

If garlic, has her eating more plan based food, which she does as a vegetarian, then who am I to question the science that might not find veracity behind the flawed studies cited to her about the curative powers of garlic. 

Dr. Willet of Harvard School of Public Health often says that is spices, aromatics (garlic and such) and herbs, can get people eating mostly plant based diets, then go ahead and believe what you want to, and eat lots of good veggies, whole grains, legumes, pulses, and herbs and spices - and find yourself doing good to your body. 

And so, this birthday of my beloved Bua (dad's cousin sister), I was on a mission to make her a jar of spicy and delicious garlic chutney.

Multigrain warm salad: A road to greater satiety!

Armed with an arsenal of vegetables, a plethora of spices, and a deep rooted desire to cook and share, is all one needs to create deliciousness that is at once delectable and good for you. 

Comforting foods do not need to be poison. 

One must cook in comfort, with pride in the act of cooking, feeding (and sharing). 

Mindfulness, being present in the present, and a hunger for sating ones senses and feeding ones soul are the most essential ingredients needed for cooking comfort food that is also good for mind, body and soul.

Extra Freekeh Salad

Freekeh is a a green wheat that is harvested young. It goes through a roasting process in its production that blesses it with a wonderful nutty flavor. 

It is a wonderful grain to have in the pantry. Intensely flavorful, earthy, full of umami. With roasted overtones, toothier than farro, softer than barley, and with a meaty density.

Book Club In Noida, A Gathering Of Novels On Legs

in another book club, an all female book club, it might have been impossible for a man to gate crash the monthly meeting. But here I was, a man, a man with audible thoughts, visible emotions, and much to say, in their midst, speaking, sharing, and also crashing happily, their haven of safe exchange. 

But it seemed like the ladies gathered, had nary a care that an outsider was in.