India is full of culture shocks from the second you step outside the airport, and it pays dividends to prepare yourself before you visit this wonderful country. You may decide to visit a farm to acclimatise yourself to the bovines you’ll no doubt encounter, you may take a trip on London’s Central Line at...
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(1) 100 of my favourite Indian recipes – Gordon Ramsay. This accompanying book to the Channel Four television series sees Gordon visiting Kerala deep in the South of India to bring us spicy, coconut-based curries and to colourful Rajasthan to learn about the creamy, flavourful dishes of the North. Authentic and flavourful stuff, as...
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The ancient dudes discovered that since all humankind has not really been created equal, there may be some differences between people internally as well. What they believed was that all humans were composed of five elements which are air, fire, earth, water and ether or space. The proportion and balance of these elements differ...
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Botanic and culinary experts have long been at loggerheads over the squash that is so loved the world over. Although it is technically a fruit, in culinary terms it is treated as a vegetable. Actually it is a squash fruit which is very striking in appearance because of the bright orange colour that it...
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Almost a century ago, the famous Bengali poet and Nobel laureate, Rabindranath Tagore, viewed the swaying mustard flowers and immortalized them in poetry. The mustard plant has, for centuries, been a part of most Indian diets. When I say most Indian diets, the mustard crop is grown and harvested mostly in the North and...
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The Bohras or the Bohri community as they are known as, hail from the western state of Gujarat in India. They were originally Muslim traders who travelled to the country from Yemen and settled down in Gujarat. Bohri food does not stint on the calories…ergo, it tastes absolutely fantastic. If there is something in...
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When Jules Verne waxed on eloquently about bananas in his runaway bestseller ‘Around the world in eighty days’, he managed to spark off the collective curiosity of an entire generation and several nations. The entire European belt wanted to know more about this wonderful fruit that had captured their imagination. India is the world’s...
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Several centuries ago, a young man called Marco Polo dubbed the title on the sleepy little village of Alapuzzha (pronounced Ah-lah-puh-dah in the native Malyalam, Alleppey in the anglicized version) and the name means ‘the land between the sea with a network of rivers flowing into it’ Marco Polo is long gone but the...
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