It started with an isolation erissery.
It was the morning of March 21st 2020 in Mumbai, four days before the official lockdown. I had a wan vegetable drawer with only one disco bhopla (pumpkin), and it was going cottony. Supplies were already scarce, unpredictable. Our part-time kitchen helper was already on paid furlough. Our three kids—the boy, four-and-a-half, the girls, two and two—needed lunch. They had soundly rejected Sindhi-style sweet and sour pumpkin sabzi the last three times I made it for them. Persisting, because it had paid off in the past, I decided to play with a recipe from Kerala. I boiled the pumpkin and smashed it, adding turmeric and a paste of fresh coconut, cumin, and one mild green chilli. I topped it with a ghee tadka of crunchy, fried coconut flakes, dried Kashmiri mirch, mustard seeds, a touch of hing, and the last of my curry leaves.
As an adult, I’d very slowly learned that all the vegetables I hated as a kid didn’t deserve my disdain. It wasn’t greens that were gross, it was just that my palate preferred them prepared differently. I love my turai (ridge gourd) slightly crunchy, skin on, certainly not slimy. I favour spinach with a bit of tang from tomatoes or lime. I’m partial to pumpkin with some texture and a ripple of heat. These are my preferences and in the recent years of parenting meal-prep, I’ve learned that kids come with their own. For weeks, I had persisted, in the face of rejection, serving them healthy food with minor tweaks until they let their guard down and sampled it. The eriserry was well liked, both in real life, and on the ‘gram.
Denne historien er fra February - March - April 2021-utgaven av Condé Nast Traveller India.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent ? Logg på
Denne historien er fra February - March - April 2021-utgaven av Condé Nast Traveller India.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent? Logg på
THE 2024 HOT LIST
Our pick of the best new hotels in the world
SHOPPING IN ABU DHABI
From a barbershop café to Emirati gems, home-grown brands offer a fresh counterpoint to the UAE capital's glitzy malls and designer labels.
LOS ANGELES PLAYS ITSELF
No place delights in retelling its own tale quite like the city of angels. Now, a wave of chefs, hoteliers, and entrepreneurs is remixing the classics to usher in a new golden age.
LOVE & TRAVEL - DECOUPLING
Ona long trip through Spain, Sophie Yun Mancini bids a tender goodbye to an old love
LOVE & TRAVEL - REFLECTIONS
For writer and translator Sara Rai, Banaras has her heart and is everywhere all at once. On a trip to Palermo, she wraps her way around the two cities in one breathless sentence
LOVE & TRAVEL - DEPARTURES
Chef Manu Chandra looks back on a time that brought home the power of love and travel
LOVE & TRAVEL - SUMMER
Travelling in a wheelchair, author Jarred McGinnis makes the most of a chance solo parenting trip
LOVE & TRAVEL - PERFUME
Author Divrina Dhingra distils the varied fragrances of the many places she has called home
CARNIVOROUS IN COIMBATORE
A Texan vegetarian fell for Kongunadu cooking, quail and all.
WHERE TO STAY - THE FIFTH AVENUE HOTEL USA
An eclectic palette and worldly flourishes fill this 19thcentury mansion turned hotel in New York.