The A-list

My list so far has been

1) Fried Shrimp
2) Fried Pomfret
3) Pomfret Curry
4) Shrimp Curry
5) Punjabi Samosa
6) Aamras
7) Kanda Bhaji ( Onion Fritters)
8) Pohe
9) Black Currant Cake
10) Kharvas ( Best milk pudding ever)

And this has been devoured in just about 24 hours since my flight landed...A special thanks to my Mom, Maternal Aunts and Bro( he got me the cake, the rest of the stuff was cooked by the ladies)!

Potluck Fun

This post is a bit late but about 2 weeks back , we had a potluck party at a friend's place. We were a group of 7 and cooked ample food that succeeded in us belching well after we were done eating. The party was fun, and we all had a good time.

The menu for the party was as follows : ( Am not going to divulge recipes as the cooks might sue me for plagiarism :P) 

APPETIZERS

Veg Puffs : A sumptuous filling of potatoes and peas wrapped in pastry sheets and then baked till golden brown in color, courtesy my dear friend S. You can figure out how good they were just by looking at the picture since by the time we clicked the picture we had just one left.

Stuffed Chillies: These chillies made by the AD-PD sister duo ( who were also our hosts) , an Indian version of Chilli Relleno, where the hotness of chillies was complemented really well by the cooling effect of the stuffing of gram flour and Indian spices.

Fish Amritsari: Small chunks of tilapia marinated and deep fried in gram flour batter and were cooked by me and A. They came out good though could have been better with some more spice and zing to it. 

Here is the link to the recipe which I referred to

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4Q1bTgNp-o

MAIN COURSE

Shrimp Masala ( Kolambi Fry) : S's other half R came up with this dish which had shrimps sautéed in onions and spices that played with our palates. The shrimp were cooked to perfection and melted away as you ate them. It was reminiscent of my mom's version of sautéed shrimp in a dry masala.

Chicken Curry: This succulent chicken curry was an AD-PD creation and was cooked in an array of spices , topped with coconut milk and cooked just right till the meat was tender and juicy. It was finger licking good and made as an awesome entrée.

We had the two entrées with chapatis ( indian pancakes) and white rice.

We were all full by the end of the main course and though we contemplated about going out for having desserts, it was going to be tough to leave the chair and head out. We made up for it the next weekend, but that is another story which might find its way to this blog sometime. All in all, we had a great night over food and drinks and it was wonderful to catch up with friends and share our culinary adventures.

Books about the land where I come from....

I have finally succumbed to my temptation and bought 2 more books ( I was going to wait a while after my last purchase in the last week of December 2009)- A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth and Sacred Games by Vikram Chandra. I had begun reading ' A Suitable Boy'  on Google Books and though it had a limited preview with missing pages, my hours at work (read : no work) would pass off amazingly well reading through Seth's story. I then realized it had some 1400 odd pages and with my dry eye problem, I realized I wasnt going to be able to enjoy it as much as I could with its book version. So last week, I logged onto Amazon and moved the book into my shopping cart. At around 14 $ , it was going to be a good buy ( If you decided to get quantitive then its almost 1$ per 100 pages which is pretty economical right?) and worth the read since the characters Seth has woven his story around are so well defined, you feel like you are living amongst them.

So having added the book to my cart, I was looking for something else to make the total to 25 and avail free shipping. I can sometimes be thrifty and try to save money on things but eventually land up spending more. I think thats precisely what smart marketing personnel take advantage of and lure us into devilish ideas like Free Shipping!!! So instead of spending those $4 on shipping, I went ahead and bought another book roughly worth the same price but thereby allowing me the free shipping catch that I had so fallen for. But thinking retrospectively, I dont think I have wasted my money, though I agree I fell for the trap ( You must be wondering by now why such a melodrama over a small thing like Free Shipping...but then where I come from melodrama sells like hot cakes and can earn you some real good publicity) . I had landed up buying Sacred Games - a book by the author Vikram Chandra whose past books have been about my city Mumbai and that is probably a big reason why I decided to buy the book. My earlier experience of reading Shantaram by Gregory Roberts( I havent finished it as yet... ) and Maximum City by Suketu Mehta , the former with Mumbai as a backdrop for a major part of the story while the latter exposing the dark underbelly of this megacity, have been awesome mainly because the writing in both stories paints the real city that Mumbai is.

So it wasnt an irony when I decided to read Sacred Games before A Suitable Boy when I received the shipment yesterday. Although the book is a work of fiction, the curiosity to revisit Mumbai through the tale was difficult to subdue. I did not get to read a lot but I was charmed with the first few pages and I am ready to devor the 1000 pages that remain. I now have two books that are big enough to keep me occupied for a couple of months and I am really looking forward to flipping through the pages of stories about families post-partition of India and the intertwining lives of police-gangsters in Mumbai. And that too when I have yet to finish Shashi Tharoor's book on India as an emerging power , " The Elephant, The Tiger, and the Cell Phone". So looks like am in total love with my country and city and am missing them a lot. Its obvious when you havent seen your land, your parents and your younger brother for 2 long years!

A comeback into the new year?

I dint blog for the last couple of months. If you would ask why, I have no idea what the reason was! I guess I just forgot about my blog or I dint have much to write about. This was until today , when a couple of friends asked me the link for my earlier blog which now I dont write on and has been closed for readers too. So I thought of making a quick update on this one.

I would have expected 2010 to start on a good note, especially after a not-so-good 2009 but an eye allergy that started just a week prior to Christmas continues to bother me even a month later ( Though the allergy has reduced, long hours infront of a TFT screen monitor has probably lead to Dry eyes). I usually do not freak if a part of me starts aching or isnt doing well but eyes seem to make me super frantic and the thought of losing my vision scares the shit out of me. The main reason being I can no longer be at the computer for long hours and that kind of feels like being handicapped.

So the point being, an eye problem is not the best way to usher in the new year, especially when you are "LOOKING OUT" for something good to happen! Anyways, the doc said I wont go blind, and though I still get scared, its much better than being paranoid and rushing to the restroom every half an hour to check if I got the vampire look on! Its more in the mind than the eye.

Also , 2 weeks into the new year and I hear about a possible early termination of contract at work, not too early but a month before what it initially was scheduled to be. Its kind of shocking when your manager who doesnt even acknowledge/talk to you during on-call staff meetings, suddenly says " Some of you temps will get an extension beyond Jan." and all you know is you were scheduled for end of Feb. You then kind of start doubting if its your ear that has a problem or the manager goofed up on the month or she was talking about someone else since she never really even knows if you are on the meeting. For a week, I thought it was the third option , until the time 2 of my colleagues were told about their last date to be 1/28. Luckily I have been spared the axe and I get one more month to sit idly , stare at the computer, do some knowledge gaining excercises on wiki and take home the paycheck.

I should therefore be not complaining about my new year. Its not as bad as it looks but then I have a bad eye and the picture is still a bit smudgy for me to figure out how its going to be for the rest of the year.