Four Thursdays remain in December and each will feature a recipe. This month’s poll is meat-heavy, with four meat-centered dishes, and three of those optimally deploy goat/mutton—and two of them further optimally deploy a specific cut: the neck. But if you don’t have access to goat neck you can use any cut that’s heavy on bones in those recipes; and if you don’t have access to any kind of goat/mutton then you can use lamb or beef. Two of these meat recipes are leftover from November’s poll. The two vegetarian recipes are newcomers. The first is a dry and tangy preparation of squash that features my new favourite commercial spice mix, Bedekar’s Malvani Masala. The other is a very simple tiranga or tricolour dal (which uses, yes, a mix of three dals of different colours) which is the very epitome of comfort food, particularly if, like us, you are at the beginning of a long winter. The poll will be left open till the end of the day, Monday. As always, you can vote for up to four recipes (though some of you do seem to vote strategically). Continue reading →

The first Thursday of November is almost upon us and so here is the poll to select the four recipes I’ll post next month. Four of these recipes are the also-rans from October’s poll: Hot and Sour Baingan Masala; Lamb Shank Curry with Tomato and Potato; Shrimp Curry with Tomato; and Red Braised Pork with Wine and Spices (this one has been on the poll since the summer). Joining them are two new recipes. One of these is for a mutton curry with sweet potato that’s best made in a pressure cooker but could easily be adapted to stove-top cooking by the less hasty (and you can, of course, substitute lamb or beef for mutton/goat). The other is the second vegetarian/vegan recipe on the poll and it too features eggplant. It’s a recipe whose spice mix I improvised as I was making it—I added a fair bit of mustard seed and we quite liked the result. And so here it is for you to consider as well. As always you can vote for up to four candidates. The poll will be left open through Tuesday. Continue reading →

Last month’s recipes were very baingan/eggplant heavy, with three out of four centered on various eggplant varieties I grew in my community garden plot this year (though not quite as heavy as September 2021 when all the recipes were eggplant-focused). The first killing frost hit us earlier this week. I did cover my eggplant and hot pepper plants and so they’ll be featured in my cooking in October as well. But you will have some deliverance from it on the blog: there’s only eggplant recipe on this month’s poll and it was the fifth place finisher in last month’s poll. Also on the poll are the other three recipes that didn’t make the cut in September and four new ones. You can vote for up to four of the eight that you’re most interested in and the four highest vote getters will be posted here every Thursday. The poll will be open through Monday. Continue reading →

In case you’re new to reading this blog, I post recipes every Thursday (usually) and at the start of the month I post a poll of the possible candidates and have you vote for up to four of the ones you’re most interested in. As was the case late last summer, my community garden plot is overflowing with eggplant and so this month I have a lot of eggplant-centered possibilities (all vegan). But there’s more than eggplant in the poll below. In fact, there are two shrimp possibilities as well for you to consider, one in which the shrimp is optional and one in which it’s central. And there are also the two holdovers from August’s poll which feature pork and mutton (goat) respectively. Yes, it’s a larger poll than usual which should make for a tighter race. Let’s see how it goes. I will leave the poll up through the weekend but don’t leave it too late to make your picks. Continue reading →

I’m afraid that I am indeed too out of it after my travel home to get any whisky tasting done. And so there won’t be a third whisky review this week. I’ll make it up later with a bonus Speyside review. And as I don’t have the energy right now to resize meal photographs either, I’m not putting up an extra restaurant report in place of the whisky review. Instead, here is the poll to help me select the recipes that I’ll post on the blog in August. There are six contenders for four spots again this month. Two are holdovers from previous polls—one  seemingly a perennial long shot, but I’m an optimistic guy. Of the four new recipes on the poll three are vegetarian which means half of this month’s poll is vegetarian—and indeed vegan. If you bemoan the lack of such recipes on my blog in most months here’s your opportunity to ensure August’s recipes will be almost all vegetarian. Continue reading →

There were five Thursdays in June and so I posted five recipes. In July there will be only four. Once again you can vote for the four you’d most like to see and the top four vote getters will be featured every Thursday this month. Returning to the poll are the three recipes that didn’t clear the bar in June: lamb shank curry with peanuts and potatoes; lamb and bean stew; and spiced chicken liver mousse. Joining them are a recipe for baingan masala (made with Bedekar’s Malvani masala); what I call un-makhni dal; and slow-cooked mutton curry. Not very many vegetarian options this month, I’m afraid: only the baingan masala (the un-makhni dal contains smoked ham hock). I expect I’ll have a lot more in next month’s poll. Remember: you can vote for up to four recipes. You don’t have to vote for four, of course—I only mention it because there are a lot of people who vote for only one or two each month. Maybe you’re voting strategically or maybe you’re not interested in all the options but just in case the clarification is needed: you can vote for four. Continue reading →

There are still a few days left in May but here’s the poll already to select recipes for June. I post recipes on Thursdays which means I’ll need to have one written up by the second of the month. I once again have eight candidates. Unlike in May, almost half are vegetarian. Three are repeats from last month’s poll: the gurda-kapoora masala featuring goat testicles and kidneys; the lamb shank curry with peanuts and potatoes; and the lamb and bean stew. The spiced roast duck will show up again in a few months time—I’m unlikely to make it again in the next month or two and I do like to make things one more time before I post recipes for them. Joining the gurda-kapoora masala in the category of offal-based dishes that are unlikely to get too many takers is a spiced chicken liver mousse that I made recently for a small gathering. Other newcomers to the poll include a tangy preparation of okra masala with yogurt; a very spicy thick chicken curry/masala; another take on dum alu; and yet another preparation of rajma. Continue reading →

Yes, it’s time to help me select recipes to post next month (on Thursdays, as always). I have eight candidates this month and I’m afraid that as written none of them are vegetarian. Two, however, can be made vegetarian—one by omitting the small shrimp I threw in on a whim, the other by replacing smoked ham hock with smoked tofu or tempeh or similar. And I know it’s a long shot but I hope a bunch of you will vote for the gurda-kapoora masala even though it features goat testicles. The recipe will work even if you leave out the testicles (assuming you can find some to buy) and use only kidneys or a mix or kidneys and liver or kidneys and liver and keema. The rest I think should not be such hard sells. But who knows, maybe you’ll surprise me and the goat balls will be the runaway winner of the poll. Continue reading →

The recipes poll is back, baby! I didn’t post one for March, largely because I wanted to clear some of my backlog and partly because, headed to Delhi, I knew there’d be at least one recipe I’d post from the trip (that turned out to be this one). I now enter April with no backlog at all, no recipes already jotted down. Which is not to say that the recipes in the poll are things I’ve never cooked before. Well, one was learned in Delhi just over a week ago and my approach to another was overhauled then as well. The other four are things that I have made before but have not written down ingredients or steps for. I won’t be recreating them in April so much as riffing in the spirit/taste memory of the originals. Most of the pictures in the slideshow below are therefore indications rather than promises of what the new versions of these dishes will look and be like. Continue reading →

Here is the poll to select the recipes for the coming month, to be posted, as always, on Thursdays. January’s poll saw the recipe for baingan masala with keema finally making the cut. Will this finally be the month of the recipe for masala-fried spare ribs which has been getting rejected for even longer? Let’s see. After a nearly all-vegetarian run in November and December, January saw only one vegetarian recipe make the cut. This month’s poll features three vegetarian recipes and three non-vegetarian recipes. It also features two recipes that may not seem particularly Indian and one that centrally involves a non-Indian ingredient. As always, you can vote for up to four candidates and the top four vote-getters will be posted (though not necessarily in order of rank). Continue reading →

Thursday is recipe day on the blog. Though there are five Thursdays this December you will not be getting five recipes from me. We will begin the month with the recipe poll on the first Thursday.

The summer and my vegetable garden are now a faint memory—though it’s not actually gotten very cold here yet: on December 1 the maximum was a positively tropical 52f or so. Still, signs of the summer persist here with the presence of an eggplant and pork dish that I first made back in early October when my eggplant plants were enjoying their last hurrah. It didn’t make the cut in November but who knows, December may be its month. It’s joined on the poll by another past also-ran: a masala-crusted stir-fry of spare ribs that I rather like but which has failed to garner enough votes to make it out of last place in the last two polls. I have one more packet of spare ribs left in the freezer from the last pig we went in on and if this makes the cut this month I will quite enjoy frying them up again. The other four dishes are new to the poll, all of them vegetarian. Continue reading →

I thought I’d get the poll to select November’s recipes up a few days earlier than usual. The first Thursday of the month is coming up very soon and so it’ll be good to have to time to make whatever the first recipe turns out to be one more time before putting it up.

Several frosts have happened since the previous version of the poll and my vegetable garden is mostly dead (only a few cauliflower plants are still going). Many of these recipes were made with garden produce in September and October though. I’ve been putting eggplant in everything I’ve made since August, it feels like. All September’s recipes were eggplant-centered and here too it shows up in two pork dishes, along with another variation on alu-gobi made with garden cauliflower. Also on the list is a potato dish to which I added dried cranberries just to troll my friend Aparna (she was gratifyingly outraged) but which came out rather well that way. Rounding out the list are a couple of dishes that didn’t make the cut in the last few polls. Will this finally be the month for the mirchi sabzi (made originally with garden peppers) and the pork rib fry? Let’s see. Continue reading →

And here now is the poll to select the recipes for this month.

Unlike September, October will not be focused on a single main ingredient. My garden is still giving me eggplant, courtesy our warmer than usual September, but it’s now a manageable trickle rather than a flood. Two of the recipes on this list of candidates were very good too, as it happens, for using up a glut of other garden produce this summer and early fall, namely hot peppers and tomatoes. And though my cauliflower harvest was no more bountiful than it has been in the past (i.e not very bountiful) the cauliflower recipe is also inspired by my own crop of white, yellow and (so far, one) purple cauliflower. But it’s not all vegetables. If after 4 weeks of vegetarian recipes some of you are hoping for some meat, there are two chicken recipes (one curry with lots of tomatoes and one roast with zero tomatoes) and one with pork. Cast your votes for up to four of these recipes below. Continue reading →

Yesterday’s look ahead to the coming month on the blog presented the usual long list of whisky reviews and invitation to nominate those you’d particularly like to see reviewed. Here now is the poll to select the four recipes for September. There are six recipes on the poll and you can vote for up to four of them. The top four vote getters will show up on the remaining four Thursdays of the month. In the past—when I did a version of this poll on Twitter and also the last couple of times on the blog—I’ve used the ranking to sequence the posts. But this month I might juggle that depending on the selection. And oh, there’s a twist this month: all the recipes feature eggplant/brinjal. We have been drowning in eggplant from my plot in a local community garden and as a result I’ve been cooking it in all kinds of ways of late. Continue reading →

As in July, the poll to select recipe posts for August will be conducted here on the blog instead of Twitter. The poll function on the blog allows for more choices and also allows multiple selections. This month’s poll includes three of the dishes that didn’t make the cut in July plus five new ones. (I replaced the crab curry in July’s poll with a crabmeat poriyal in this one.) You can vote for up to three dishes. The poll will be open till noon Minnesota time on Tuesday.The top four vote-getters will be posted in order on Thursdays this month, starting on Aug 5—the others will enter the poll for September. Photographs of the dishes are included to give you a better sense of what you are voting for. Continue reading →

For a while now I’ve been doing polls on Twitter at the start of each month to figure out the sequence of the month’s recipes. Twitter’s poll function is very limited, however, and so I’ve decided to do these polls on the blog going forward. If you are among those who are interested in my recipes please respond to this poll in the next 48 hours. You can vote for up to three options. The top four vote getters will be posted on the remaining Thursdays in July. The others will enter the pool for August’s poll. Continue reading →