Madhur Jaffrey is an actress, author and a cook, who seems absolutely indefatigable. Now in her late 70s she continues to write, act,  and is back on the BBC this year with a new TV series  Curry Nation that looks at the impact of Indian curry in the UK. In the 1980s her BBC series [...]

Chances are you read the latest article on paan in The New York Times. Paan has become the “icon of Jackson Heights,” as a South Asian denizen put it in the article. Those familiar red paan stains now dot the landscape of this New York neighborhood.  It is just not New York that is challenged [...]

Bangalore. Every year for a few weeks I become a Bangalore local, and try to pick up the threads from where I  left it the previous year. I have been doing this exercise for over over a decade. Before Bangalore, it was Madras (Chennai) where I spent a few weeks of my precious vacation before [...]

Rajnee vs. Chuck Narris served with a strong Indian flavor from Expedia India is brilliant, so kck back, grab that cup of strong South Indian filter coffee and watch. This East-West connection had  to happen in this fast, shrinking world. Chuck Norris and “Superstar” Rajni had to meet in the virtual world.

What is Pongal? This is a question that  I often get asked in the US. Think of it like an Indian version of Thanksgiving I respond. Come January, and people in different parts of India gear up for a “thanksgiving” celebration that also marks the end of winter. This harvest festival has different names in [...]

Earlier this year New York-based writer/teacher Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya’s book “The Storyteller of Marrakesh,” was published. Described by The New York Times as an “enigmatic fable” the book explores the disappearance of a young foreign couple – a French-American woman and her Indian partner. This is a story of “love and mystery.” Every year the young [...]

There are a few dates that you might remember from your history class. Perhaps your remember the following dates? 1453 1493 1498 1453 kind of rings a bell? That is the year that Constantinople fell as your high school textbooks may have described it. An upshot of this was that that the overland route from [...]

(A version of this article was originally published in Traveller’s India magazine (USA) in 2005.) Stephen Alter is a second generation Pahadi American just like his first cousin Bollywood actor Tom Alter. Born in the hot and dusty plains of Uttar Pradesh, Alter grew up in the foothills of Himalayas, where he went to school [...]

This year’s Tiffin Cup award goes to Mint & Mustard headed by chef Anand Joseph George. This award is for the Best South Asian restaurant in UK. George won the award for his dish, which was a pan seared seabass fillets on a bed of potato and curry leaf mash, with a sauce of raw mangoes, ginger and coconut [...]

Mint & Mustard opened last year in Cardiff, Wales and is headed by Anand Joseph George, a truly gifted chef. The restaurant has got some great review and recently  won the annual South Asian Chef competition in Wales and will represent at the national level. My husband and I first met George in Jamavar, the [...]