Blogs and Recipes

Coastal Karnataka is home of long preserved recipes both vegetarian and non-vegetarian alike. Pickles are no exceptions. Mangalorean Mango Pickle is a spicy, acidic pickle native to Mangalore. They have three variations “Middi Uppinakayi” made from small but whole mangoes, “Kette Uppiinakayi” made from the cut mangoes (just like rest of India) and “Mango Thokku” made from the grated raw mangoes. Pickle is a must-have condiment in any Indian meal, adding a spicy kick to even the most basic dishes. Making pickles at home was once commonplace in most households. The practice of preparing pickles at home is progressively vanishing...

  India’s favourite condiment is pickles. Their sweet, savoury, and tangy flavours go well with all of Indian cuisine’s main meals. Every part of our country has its own ingredients and recipes for pickles, yet every Indian household has one of many different variations. Mango, also regarded as “the king of fruits,” has a stronghold in the pickle industry. Mango pickle has a delightful flavour that allows you to enjoy the flavour of seasonal mangoes all year. To give a wonderful flavour, this pickle is produced with the interaction of carefully selected ingredients such as raw mangoes, spices, and oil....

In North India and specifically in Haryana, Govardhan Pooja is celebrated in our family which falls on a day after Diwali. The little mountain of ‘gobar’ as a symbol of govardhan is prepared with ‘Bajra Khichdi’ in the form of prasad. My mother tells me that the ritual has greater significance than we think. In North India, Diwali comes in the month of ‘Kartik Maas’ which also marks the beginning of winter season. The ‘bajra khichdi’ is prepared with generous ‘ghee’ and the combination is considered to be a great protector of our body in winters due to the warm...

I can still smell and taste my grandma’s best mango pickle when I remember summers as a kid: pickle slathered over a roti wrapped into an afternoon snack, pickle oil blended with potatoes and onions to go with rice and dal, or just pickle straight up. My grandmother, who disliked cooking and took on every other menial chore in the home to avoid kitchen work, made the finest pickles I’ve ever tasted. It’s a shame she passed away before passing on her recipes. But more than the recipes, I remember her sitting in the sun, dressed in a snow-white pristine...

After a cold winter, we enter the season of spring. The temperature slowly begins to rise, and our diet requirement changes along with the changing weather. During the cold winters, the body’s main goal is to store fat, but as we move towards a warmer climate our internal environment changes, body temperature rises and we begin to melt fat faster. According to Ayurveda, we enter the Kapha season in spring. The earth and the water elements are prominent in this season. Universally spring is associated with cleaning, much like this our bodies enter a cleaning phase too. Eating foods that...

  Shorter days and colder temperatures do not just mean a change for our body on the outside, but on the inside too. It’s not just our clothes and dressing style that changes in winters, our metabolism, food choices and hunger cues are all affected by the weather. Studies have shown that metabolism speeds up in winter; this is associated with increased hunger and a craving for comfort foods. You might have noticed people often complaining that they eat more during winters, turns out it is true.  Winter comes with its own set of viral infections and flu. Especially in...