coconut rice, spicy mushrooms and greens
Mumbai’s buzzing with auspiciousness this month. Dussera (the celebration of the slaying of Ravana) was last Monday, Diwali is in a couple weeks, our calendar is full of Diwali dinner invitations, and our counters are piled with treats- both savory and sweet- sent by well-meaning relatives. We also have a bunch of coconuts lying around. During Navratri last week, H. and I went to the Mahalaxmi temple. My mom-in-law bought me a coconut to offer Laxmi, which I handed to the priest; in exchange (I think) I got a blessed one back. On Dussera day, which we spent in Mahabaleshwar, we  split upon a coconut and sprinkled its water on our car’s wheels (we were doing the Du

buddakan nyc restaurant review
Back in August, when H. and I were in New York, my dad’s friend from college and his wife took us out to dinner at Buddakan. I probably wouldn’t have gone there on my own; Buddakan is a trendy, two-level restaurant with a cocktail bar, a room wallpapered with electronic, back-lit books, and another room where the higher wall is paneled with Buddha portraits. (I think there are two more rooms, too). But I’m so glad we tried it because we had a delicious meal filled with food that was a lot of fun to eat. We started with  sublime edamame dumplings that just melted in my mouth, and the pea green colored puree inside each small pouch tasted as though it had  be

chocolate prune macarons
Over the weekend, Hrishikesh and I made salted caramel butter ice cream. Well- we almost made it- we made the caramel, and added the salted butter, and the cream and milk and egg yolks, thickened the mixture to a custard, strained it into another batch of ice milk, chilled everything overnight and the next morning put it in my brand new ice cream machine, which I brought back from America- only to have it stop running after five minutes. We were using a converter, because American electronics run on 110 v and Indian run on 220 v- but it didn’t help. After letting the machine cool down, we gave it another go and again, after five minutes, it stopped churning. I didn’