Palestinian Pasta, Rumbledethumps, Pesarattu Dosa, and All Things Fermented
Sharing a few of my favorite cooks!
The Story
When I was a young girl, I treated my mom’s kitchen like my personal chemistry lab. I would mix random ingredients and spices together just to see what would happen.
A teacher once said to me, “I don’t trust a Tantrika who doesn’t like to cook.” Spiritual life has often been described as a process of “cooking”: transforming, leavening, heating, cooling, and alchemizing. But I also just love to cook food.
At the age of five, I prepared my first family dinner party. Mom had a Julia Child cookbook with holiday menus in the back. I told her that I wanted to cook the English Christmas menu. It consisted of roast beef, yorkshire pudding, and some sides and fixings.
Mom was understandably skeptical, but she went along with it and bought the ingredients. The dinner turned out beautifully. And I never forgot my feeling of amazement at the transformation of the yorkshire puddings from humble blobs of egg, milk, and flour to towering toothsome perfection.
I kept on cooking and even put in some time baking and cooking in restaurants. Now I still love to throw dinner parties, read food blogs and, yes, talk about food in excruciating (to some) detail.
I discovered food blogs early on in the evolution of the blogosphere. Here are a few of my more recent finds. Enjoy, and may the cooking continue!
Roving Haggis
One of the things I learned from a certain former Scottish girlfriend is that haggis and neeps is the national dish of Scotland. Neeps are turnips. Haggis consists of boiled sheep's or calf's offal mixed with suet, oatmeal, and seasonings. Ew, or “ewe”, but to each their own.
Ali Stoner is the delightfully entertaining host of the eclectic Instagram food blog, Roving Haggis. The food is Scottish-adjacent and fun to prepare without being fussy.
I made this👇🏼 potato and brussel sprouts dish, Rumbledethumps, for a community dinner. It was delicious.
Here’s the receipe written out!
Johnny Kyunghwo aka The Fermenter Guy
No one other than me calls Johnny Kyunghwo the Fermenter Guy. Just to keep things honest.
But seriously, this young British Korean cook will get you inspired to concoct all kinds of fermentations including stuff you’ve probably never heard of such as “milky soda,” “pumpkin syrup,” and “ginseng fermented honey.” He often shepherds his herd of fermentations over several videos because the process takes awhile!
Johnny is super-experimental and most of the time doesn’t exactly know what the result is going to be. That makes him an honorary Tantrika in my book.
Johnny starts up the pumpkin syrup!
Chefji’s traditional Palestine palette
Gibran Alcocer of Chefji’s Kitchen is from Palestine. Although he skillfully practices intersectionality in the kitchen with food from other cultures, his more traditional Palestinian recipes are inspired. He plans to start up cooking lessons soon.
A vegetarian pasta with lentils from Palestine
The Indian Food Blogosphere
My earliest memories of food blogs are of encounters with the wildly diverse offerings from Indian women living both in India and the diaspora.
I was wowed by the opportunities to learn to cook a seemingly infinite range of foods from all over India. But I was also moved by the supportive communities that the women bloggers formed. It was a real socio-cultural movement.
Women helped each other to create businesses and learn the ins and outs of website design and food photography. There was a lot of friendly cross-promotion. Now that those intrepid Indian women have forged the path, many other cooks have followed along.
A few of my favorite Indian food blogs
Edible Garden
Edible garden is offered by Nags, a full-time mom hailing from Kerala and currently living in Singapore. Nags’ recipes are often of the South Indian variety and are quick, healthy, and delicious. Nothing too difficult.
Pesarattu dosa is one of my favorites from Edible Garden. It’s made with whole green mung bean and does not require fermentation.
Spice Girl Kitchen
Spice Girl Kitchen from Shubhra Ramineni offers traditional Indian recipes adapted for busy folk like us. Shubhra has published a number of cookbooks: Entice with Spice, Easy and Quick Indian Recipes for Beginners, and Healthy Indian Vegetarian Cooking.
Thandai is a spectacularly delish summer beverage: nutty, floral, and cooling.
Hebbar’s Kitchen
Heavy on the Indian sweets and all veg, Hebbar’s Kitchen has been a go-to of mine. There’s no bio on the site, just lots and lots of photos of yummy food.
Anyone who claims to know me knows how much I love the Indian sweet gajar ka halwah (carrot halva). Here’s Hebbar’s version, video included!
Monsoon Eats
Monsoon Eats is the creation of Jheel Eguren. Her blog is inspired by her mom’s cooking and memories of the monsoon season in India. The recipes are beautiful, creative, and often incorporate accents from the Southwest U.S. where Jheel now dances, cooks, and lives.
Check out Jheel’s Amritsari Chole, a traditional street food based on humble garbanzo beans, but here alluringly fancied up.
Pure Indian Foods Blog
So Pure Indian Foods Blog is a project of Pure Indian Foods, my favorite purveyor of organic and speciality foodstuffs and spices from India. Of course they are building recipes from ingredients that they sell in their store. But you won’t mind because the food is just so good.
The recipes are dead-simple and entirely wholesome. For instance, Indian rice with saffron and cashews.
If I’ve piqued your interest in Indian food blogs, there are literally thousands of other options. But these are good places to begin!
with infinite love,
Shambhavi