From My Grandma's House

Coconut Sprinkled with Sugar

This is an old favourite of mine that I first had at my grandma's house in Bangladesh. It's basically freshly grated coconut sprinkled with (a lot of) white sugar. And no, it's just not the same with dried or tinned coconut!

This particular coconut came with us from my dad's ancestral home in Salop, Sirajganj - a rather interesting trip that I intend to blog about later.

More Fusion: An Experimental Sorbet

Spiced Tamarind Sorbet

Spiced tamarind sorbet with henna leaves (because we couldn't find anything else for garnish!)

Tamarind based drinks are pretty common in Bangladesh. They're usually served cold and spiced to provide relief from the summer heat. Summer temperatures easily surpass 35 degrees Celsius here (even though Google lies and insists it's 28 degrees!) and as such, I imagined a sorbet would be an even more welcome comfort. I've been looking up sorbet recipes from around the web, and I'm adapting this recipe from the Coconut Raita blog's Tamarind and Lime Sorbet post. I'm pretty proud of it - it's essentially replica of our family's usual tamarind drink in sorbet form, and it's even been given a thumbs up by my grandma who's notoriously snobby about good food!

Blogging From Bangladesh

I'm Praying For Internet

Some things in Dhaka, like traffic, have gotten slower.

Technology on the other hand, has gotten faster.
Much respect to this brave soul undertaking rickshaw computing!

I admit got a little teary when the plane landed at the airport in Dhaka. But then we stepped out of the lounge the 138% humidity hit me like a wet towel. Then it took us 3 hours to get home because of the traffic, and reality had begun to catch up with me again.

But I’m still holding onto shreds of optimism as I sit here typing this on a train headed from Sirajganj to Dhaka. I’m tethering my phone’s EDGE connection to my laptop, and hoping that it’ll be good enough to actually upload this post. This in itself is a major improvement as far as I’m concerned. I’m on my way back from Salop, the village where my parents’ ancestral home still stands (barely!).

Goodbye England

Fake 20 Minute Tandoori Chicken

It's not red because of no food colouring, and also because it's fake! 

I'm flying to Bangladesh in a few hours, and I thought I'd do a last post before I leave. I didn't want to spend hours cooking the night before my flight, but I still wanted something home made. Thus the 20 minute dish. I'm also (hopefully) moving to London in September, so I've been checking out some of the food blogs from around there. One of the writers from a blog I found, Dos Hermanos, talks about how classic recipes are "debased so they can be squeezed into the schedules of the busy and the lazy" in his post Mission Coq Au Vin: Serving Up A Dodgy Old Boiler. I completely agree with this sentiment. A recipe is as a recipe is. If you deviate from it, you end up with something different from the original. And while it is fine to deviate from the original for whatever reason, it is not fine to label the deviant as the original. It irks me greatly when restaurants do this and serve biriyani or beef bhuna that is obviously not real. Well, sure it's real in the sense that it exists, but it doesn't exist as biriyani or beef bhuna. It's fake biriyani or fake beef bhuna.

Hence the title of this post. I cooked chicken, and my leading ingredient was tandoori masala. But it was in no way authentic tandoori chicken - whatever that may even be. I was short on time but I wanted the comfort of home cooked food and this is what I went for. If you ever find yourself in the same situation, this is possibly the recipe for you.