Do you love lemon in desserts? Please say you do 🙂 Lemon, to me, is one of the best flavours for a dessert. It is the perfect ingredient to add that delicious balance to a dessert so it tastes sweet but tangy, rich but fruity all at the same time. Like magic 🙂
After years of just eating lemon tarts, I discovered lemon loaves. Who knew it was so simple to bake with lemon? This lemon loaf is something I bake a lot and it is always a massive crowd favourite! Always.
I love experimenting with new food. New cuisines, new recipes for familiar food, tweaking recipes I already know – experimentation is always good.
Sometimes experiments don’t work, but sometimes they result in such delicious food! Like this garlic bok choy with mushrooms 🙂
I recently invited some friends over for dinner and was thinking about what I could make for the main course. Given the spread of preferences, I figured chicken would be the easiest protein to go with. But what to do with the chicken?
I was making a lot of other things which would take time (chaat, dal makhni etc) so wanted something which would be easy and fuss free. I ended up tweaking my Dahi Chicken recipe to make it into a drier, more spicy dish. Result – AMAZE!
I started baking when I was very young. Around the age of 4. I used to help my grandmoms by just mixing the final batter at the time and ate most of it while doing so 🙂 Over time, I moved on to doing more of the work, under their supervision and saw them make different kinds of cakes in the process. Best weekend or vacation activity, I say!
For the longest time we just had basic vanilla and basic chocolate cakes. With the occasional rainbow cake for fun. Once while we were out for a meal, I saw marble cake on offer. I was amazed at this magical way that both vanilla and chocolate were part of the same cake! As far as I knew, adding chocolate to a vanilla cake made the whole thing chocolate. What was this awesomeness?
This was around the time boxed cake mixes were my go-to (yes, I had that phase) and I found this marble cake at the store. Got home, tried it and was super thrilled! From them on, this has been one of my favourites to make. Obviously, it is now made from scratch. No box mixes anymore! This is such a throwback to discovering new kinds of cake and figuring out how to make them minus my friend Google 🙂
I might not be able to speak Bengali or know too much about Bengali culture (I try), but I sure as hell LOVE Bengali food. I have eaten a fair bit of it growing up, especially at my grandmom’s house. My aunts, to this day, feed me at least some Bengali food when I visit them. I make some Bengali food at home now and am constantly looking to add more to my repertoire.
Even though I have barely spent any time in Kolkata (where I was born), Bengali food to me is extremely synonymous to home. To comfort. To nostalgia. To deliciousness.
When I go to a Bengali restaurant, I am always keen to try new things and also to try my absolutely rubbish broken Bengali 🙂 I guess this is a way for me to connect to that part of my heritage.
One thing that screams Bengali food is Kasundi. Kasundi is this pungent, spicy, fermented mustard sauce that is integral to Bengali cuisine. It is used as a dip or as part of a curry and it just explodes in your mouth with each bite. It is potent, believe me! It is also extremely delicious! The only other remotely similar flavour bomb is wasabi, in my opinion.
This chicken dish uses Kasundi in the curry and is pretty damn tasty 🙂
Continue reading “Kasundi Chicken (Chicken with a Bengali mustard sauce)”
My Tuck Box 