Secularism may be a tired, washed out concept in much of India but in Mamata’s Bengal it still reigns in all its majesty. For ...

But let’s give the humble goat the credit it rarely receives. Even in medieval Muslim courts where there was no bar on eating beef, goat was always preferred by kings, nobles and gourmets. There are ...

So the Brits will use it for such dishes as a Lancashire Hot Pot which is a mutton and potato stew. The French will call a cassoulet (beans with goose, sausage, pork etc.) or Bouef Bourguignon (beef ...

Why do people live in such fear of the government in India? Why do we fear what vengeful (or corrupt) authorities can do to us? And more to the point: why does this fear exist even when we know that ...

Though we talk a lot of about chefs and their role in creating a modern cuisine in India, the truth is that the innovation universe is tiny and it was only a small group of men who changed all the ...

Decades ago when I went to school in Ajmer, Jaipur was the nearest proper airport (it probably still is) and the nearest big town. There was, we knew, huge tourism potential in Rajasthan but frankly ...

The great misconception about Kolkata is that it is a parochial Bengali town. That’s much less true than it was when I lived in the city and even way back in 1986, Kolkata’s food was marked by ...

Put yourself in Manish Mehrotra’s shoes. You are, by common consent, India’s greatest chef. At a time when modern Indian food was mostly about the Frenchified presentation preferred by chefs at ...