The time has come, the Walrus said,
to talk of many things,
of ships and shoes and sealing wax,
of cabbages and kings…
and so I start my blog with lines from my all-time favourite book, Alice in Wonderland. About food, as a point of beginning, but hoping that it will take a life of its own and occasionally stray into other things.
I have been in the kitchen a lot this past week, baking and everything. Most of the recipes have been new-found ones from favourite blogs. But cookies cannot a lunch make. Usually. With the monsoon season in fullish swing, ’tis the season for limited choices, unless you don’t have teens in the family, and everybody agrees that gourds are heaven-sent.
Sookhe Aloo
So it fell on the ubiquitous aloo to deliver. That is one vegetable that even the most reluctant cook can do well, and in a jiffy. And in this hot and humid weather, you want to be in and out of the kitchen fast.
And this dish transports me to Pooh, a remote area in the Himachal mountains, where we visited my cousins when my son was not quite one year old. The dish had one spice that I had never before used with potatoes, and it totally transforms them. I don’t really know to which region the dish belongs because it was a masala given to my aunt by a friend in their Border Roads community that has people from all over the country…but she knew the ingredient that made it different.
