Picture a typical morning in a South Indian kitchen. The stove hisses, milk simmers in a heavy-bottomed vessel, and somewhere close by, someone is pouring coffee decoction back and forth …

In Mumbai, the govinda troupes have been practising for weeks, stacking themselves four and five humans high in a park at dusk, working out who goes on top. In Vrindavan, …

The kitchen goes quiet an hour before midnight, and that’s usually when you smell it: roasted coriander seeds and ghee, somewhere between a temple and a home. Someone’s mother is …

Seafood Risotto is one of those recipes I return to whenever I want something that feels genuinely good without requiring a full afternoon in the kitchen. I first made this …

Chicken in Wine Sauce became a regular in my kitchen because of my husband. He is not someone who asks for the same thing twice, so when he came back …

Vegetable Dosa has been on my breakfast table more times than I can count, mostly because my younger nephew decided a few years ago that plain dosa was boring. He …

Capsicum and Peanut Curry came into my regular cooking through a photocopied recipe a colleague gave me years ago, scribbled with margin notes about how much tamarind to use and …

The first sign of jamun season was never the fruit itself. It was your tongue. You’d come home from the terrace or the school ground with a mouth stained deep …

The lipid panel came back a shade past normal, and your doctor said the word every Indian household dreads: cholesterol. Somewhere in the back of your mind, a chorus of …

Every June, my grandmother’s terrace in Chennai turned into a pickling ground. Mangoes lay in neat rows on old cotton sarees, drying in the sun until their skins wrinkled just …

Tangy Tomato Curry is one of those dishes my husband and I genuinely disagree about. He insists his mother’s version used tamarind for the sourness, while I have always made …

Crab Curry with Coconut was the dish that made me realise I had been rushing seafood my entire cooking life. I first had a version of this at a small …

The first time I made dal on my own, I seasoned it the way I’d watched my mother do it for twenty years – a quick flick of salt from …

The cork leaves Arjun’s hand with a sound somewhere between a gunshot and a giggle, and for half a second nobody on the terrace breathes. Then the foam comes, racing …

Nobody thinks about their bones until something makes them. For a lot of people that moment arrives quietly: a knee that complains on the stairs, an aunt’s hip replacement after …

Kerala Style Duck Roast has been the subject of a low-grade argument in my household for at least five years. My husband insists his family version uses no coconut milk …

Bhagara Baigan came into my regular rotation because my husband asked for it, specifically. Not a general request for something Hyderabadi or something with brinjal — he asked for this …

Spinach Mushroom Quiche was the first thing my colleague Priya and I genuinely disagreed about in the kitchen. She insisted the crust needed to be blind-baked with weights before the …

Somewhere between October and February, a small hard green fruit shows up on every roadside cart and in every subziwala’s basket across India, and something in the collective memory switches …

Spiced Baby Potato Salad is one of those recipes my husband and I genuinely argue about. He insists that a proper potato salad should use only boiled, peeled potatoes with …

Stuffed Vegetable Paratha came into my regular rotation because of a very specific request. My nephew, who visits most weekends, went through a phase of refusing plain rotis entirely. He …