How it all began...

The thrill of creating a new blog is something quite unique. What to call it, what will the content be like and what will people have to say about this attempt are all questions that make the creative juices flow.  The idea for this latest blog stemmed from the fact that a friend mentioned leaving a well paying job to start a eatery of his own.

The realization that food has become a subject that interests almost everyone and that dal roti is no longer what food is about led to the thought of chronicling my food experiences. So this blog is going to be all about food. However mind you food never is alone, it’s accompanied with some adventure, some gossip, some light moments and some never to be forgotten memories. So while food remains our hero my attempt would also be to touch upon that little extra that made a meal much more than a biological process.

I come from a family where food was always the central feature of all planning, whether travel, wedding or holiday…the first thing to be planned and in utmost detail would be the food. A holiday brunch, a Sunday lunch, a weekend special, a rainy day menu…there always was that special something cooking, literally.

Dad would take care to familiarize us with all sorts of cuisine and ensure that his kids never had to ask ‘what is that’ cause they already knew. This mind you wasn’t an easy task as we lived in a sleepy township called Faridabad and anything beyond a chole bhature or dosa was to be had only in the restaurants of Delhi. This made all our trips to Delhi and annual vacations to Calcutta by extension culinary trips.

We grew up watching Dad and Mom try and recreate interesting meals we had, at home replacing not to be found ingredients with locally available stuff. These were pre-liberalization days and the chances of finding a bottle of olives or a good fish sauce in a small town in north India were as high as that of finding a genie in the bottle. Yet to the credit of my parents we had chinese, continental, mughlai, south Indian and more made at home and as close to the authentic stuff as possible. This was of course besides the elaborate Bengali meals which in their variety and complexity can rival any Kashmiri wazwan or French cuisine.

So I grew up with a taste for everything delicious and if there was a hint of adventure in the same it made it so much more fun. I have skipped college classes, important meetings and getting home deadlines inorder to figure out a good eatery. I have begged, borrowed and ahem (stolen) from friends lunch boxes . I have basically lived for food and so I find it only right that I should write about it as well.