A Cook to Jhoom! Recipe published in The Guardian as the winning recipe!

On Saturday 13th April, a very popular Cook to Jhoom! recipe, the Spicy Roasted Butternut Squash Salad with a Yogurt Tahini Herb dressing won the reader’s recipe swap in none other than THE Guardian newspaper. The theme was ROAST. Here is the link to the article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2013/apr/13/readers-recipe-swap-roast and here is a photo of the article in the Guardian’s COOK supplement. We More →

Spicy roasted chickpeas and baked matoke (plantain) chips

I remember going to an elegant champagne and dessert party one evening when I was living in Miami. I hadn’t had dinner. It was an incredible spread of desserts including the most beautiful cakes, tarts, combinations of chocolate and fruit, and even mille feuille. After my 3rd bite of dessert, I found myself sneaking back into the hostess’s kitchen, peeking More →

Alternatives to sugar…and are they really healthier?

Doctors, dentists, and nutritionists have been warning us of the adverse effects of sugar for a while now. Too much sugar causes obesity (it is calorie dense), dental problems, mood swings and fluctuations in energy levels. It is also thought to be responsible for causing liver disease which is linked to insulin resistance, hypertension, type 2 diabetes and heart disease. More →

Almond Chai Latte

I love Indian masala tea. I prefer my masala to be sweetly perfumed and warm, heavy on the cardamom, very light on the cinnamon, fennel seed and ginger, and preferably no cloves. Certainly no black pepper! Chai means tea in Hindi, not necessarily masala tea, even the tea leaves are referred to as ‘chai ki patti’. Initially I found it More →

Banana Cardamom Oat Muffins

In my recently published cookbook, Cook to Jhoom!, there are a mere three recipes in the ‘Sweet’ section. It has been challenging to come up with a varied selection of healthy and tasty Indian or Indian inspired sweets. Indian sweets are famous for being milky, creamy and very very sweet, almost always scented with cardamom, sometimes with saffron and garnished More →

Yogurt Rice or Thayir Choru

Following on from my previous post on South Indian food and Beetroot Thoran, I present Yogurt Rice or Thayir Choru which is the perfect accompaniment to the thoran and really delicious just on its own with a little pickle. Ammini Ramachandran, author of Grains Greens and Grated Coconuts, a fabulous book on the vegetarian food of Kerala, describes it as a taste of More →

Beetroot Thoran

This is my first foray into South Indian food on the blog, Kerala to be more specific. My first introduction to South Indian food was the marvelous masala dosa while on holiday in Delhi as a child. There was a travelling dosa-walla who would wheel his cart down the street behind my maasi’s house most evenings, calling out to us and tempting us all with the More →