ZOË'S ZING

I am a food enthusiast without real culinary skills. So, confession: I wasn't planning to make any bread but was trying to set yogurt at home. Per Murphy's law anything that can possibly go wrong, does and it did- unreliable starter, non-thermophilic culture whatever. So I decided to turn that curdled yogurt into ricotta cheese and use the whey/buttermilk to make bread. Also, since there is no yeast available in the market to make real bread because of Covid-19 if one really wanted to. My recipe is very basic but there are many variations to chose from. The best thing is you don’t have to super precise with buttermilk or flour quantity- yet you would get a good sponge in this relatively dense bread. UnRecipe: 2 cups of all purpose flour (or a mix of whole wheat+ all purpose) 50 gm cold butter- shred it and mix cold 1 cup buttermilk from my failed yogurt (or use milk and curdle it with lemon/vinegar) 1 T spoon Baking soda 1 T spoon Salt 2 T spoon Sugar Hand...

A flower. A song.  Not first. Not rose. Some call it tuberose, some jasmine. It blooms at night and fills the entire atmosphere with its fragrance. Reminds me walking through the lanes of Matunga, Mumbai amidst South Indian temples, looking at the Nalli's saree shop and suddenly the waft of mixed aroma of freshly fried banana chips with that of roses and jasmine transported one to South of India. Having many beautiful temples nestled near each other, there is always a sense of being in presence of divinity and serenity. Peace amidst the chaos of a busy market. Right in the middle of that hustle and bustle, its a bliss to find a flower market and watch florists making beautiful and intricate garlands for weddings, poojas, decorations and for personal use- some entirely made of roses. "Ye Lai Xiang" means evening fragrance; probably named after some variety of flower that blooms at night. For me its similar to Jasmine - Nishigandha/Rajanigandha with...

C /o Kancharapalem (2018), a Telugu film produced by Dr. Praveena Paruchuri, a cardiologist based in USA. The film is set in a small suburb of Visakhapatnam and has evoked mixed emotions in me. The movie has very ordinary looking people and very realistic feel and sincere appeal to it. At the outset, the movie starts with apparently four different love stories which are connected at the end as if they were different milestones at different age-stages of one person's life journey. Hats-off to Dr. Paruchuri for daring to act as a prostitute in the movie in a very convincing way. The movie has some really nice sketches and songs.  Although the film touches many important issues in a very simple way- age, gender, equality, sexuality, religion, love, societal acceptance, greed, crime, poverty, grief; there was something missing in the movie and I could not point to it. May be what was missing in the movie, itself added to the enigma of the movie and the philosophy that it wants to p...

When I was a little girl, I visited Kolkata (Calcutta-back then). I kind of knew about the iconic Howrah Bridge that we had to cross to get to the city considering my curious nature, encouraging mother and precocious reading. The two main facts that I knew were that it was the longest cantilever bridges the world. A cantilever bridge is supported on only one end and the supporting end acts as an anchorage for sustaining another portion. The second fact was that it was the it the busiest balanced cantilever bridge on the planet with highest number of people traveling over it. One of my older cousin had come to pick us up from the station was very enthusiastic about telling us more about the bridge, about Kolkata in general and had assumed a role of amateur local tourist guide. He started narrating the specialities of the bridge but I started blurting out in middle of his narration as soon as he uttered "Do you know what's special about this bridge?" Because of my interr...