Indulge at Restore | Restore by Nandi
Tag

indulgeatrestore

Browsing
Recipes

Recipe: Lucy’s Lemon Poppy Cake

By

Do you ever have that feeling, returning from travels or even just from a demanding day, that you simply must bake something that makes you feel good?

It’s a feeling I have often – which means that the emotion that follows, as I gently remove my creation of the day from the oven, is also one that I frequently get to enjoy. Many things inspire the baking itself. A craving, for instance. Or a memory. Sometimes, the creativity comes from cookbooks. A recent one I picked up is Love, Manuela. I lost myself for hours in the pretty pastels and luscious desserts that filled the pages of the book. Another favourite is Under The Walnut Tree by Fanny & Anna Bergenström, which features ingredients and recipes from around the world.

And sometimes, everything begins with a single ingredient.

When my friend Lucy visited recently, she brought me a beautiful batch of Meyer lemons, garden-grown and gorgeous. I know the tree from which she plucked them, from her home near a cove in Wareham, close to Boston. I love Lucy’s garden, unmanicured and filled with a wild charm. It was where her son’s wedding was held, with a Star Trek theme, and I vividly recall the funky geometric necklace I wore as per the dress code! Lucy came to visit in India bearing good tidings, kind comfort… and sweet, gently-raised lemons.

View Post
By
Recipes

Recipe: A Vegan Burger That Will Make You Go “Wow!”

By

When most people hear the word “burger”, they think of an oily, low-nutrition meal full of sauces and heavy meat, polished off with unhealthy sodas and greasy fries! But what if I told you that I can share with you how I make something that looks like the real thing, tastes just as (or more!) delicious, and doesn’t do anything but nourish your body and soul?

My vegan bean burger is an improvisation on a dish that one of my teachers at the Kushi Institute, Chris Jenkin, used to make for us for lunch sometimes, in a strictly macrobiotic style using East Asian ingredients. I love innovating in the kitchen, discovering ways to turn a dish around and make it vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free and so on. I also consider how to source ingredients that are seasonal and readily available. Call it Macrobiotics meets Madras! Here’s a perfect example of how I fine-tuned a recipe so that it makes the best sense for climactic and cultural conditions.

View Post
By
Recipes

Recipe: A Remedy For The Sniffle Season

By

With the monsoon, the sick season begins. The kids (and all the adults whom illness reduces to behaving like kids!) catch the flu. Coughs, colds, sneezing, sore throats – no sooner does one person in the household calm down does the next come down with a bout!

When it comes to healthcare, I’m a believer in homemade concoctions and natural wisdom. There’s a particular cough syrup that I find very effective, the basics of which I learned from Kiran Patel, an amazing Mumbai-based nutritionist whose principles of simplicity for wellbeing match mine. You will need nothing more for it than some of the most basic ingredients in your kitchen, garden or windowsill pots.

View Post
By
Recipes

Recipe: Sweet-Savoury Festive Kachoris

By

There are always beautiful things that we learn from our parents, grandparents and in-laws. The kitchen is one such space of knowledge shared and passed on. When I got married into the family (in India, due to the joint family system – one marries families, not individuals!) I had the chance to learn more than I had imagined. My mother-in-law is an educated woman who enjoys cooking, and coming from different regions of the country, she and I had different styles and methods. We would often argue about how my family would make a dish a particular way, while she would insist that her family’s recipe was better. So it was with her kachoris, a delicious regional variant of the internationally-ubiquitous samosa.

View Post
By