Not that diary

It feels like yesterday when we were in college and joking about Indian mothers force-feeding their children to eat fruit. " Beta, yeh lo fruit khao, fruit ". In the blink of an eye one realises that people do (scarily) become like their parents, or other elders in their lives. One must accept what one cannot change. So here I am, still writing paragraph after paragraph on the joys of discovering known and unknown fruits. For variety, this time I have added some juices and teas to the mix. Passion Fruit The modern world is such that we are more likely to have slathered passion-fruit fragranced cream on ourselves ( a la Body Shop ) than actually eating a passion fruit. Although I had tasted one before, I must confess the first time I actually sliced a passion fruit open was just a few months ago. After a few tasting rounds, I still consider them to be a bit too sour for my taste buds, and the seeds are too 'chewy'. Since the fruit has tonnes of health benefits, I shall...

In the early days, just like the fruits, the vegetable section of supermarkets continued to fill me with more questions than answers. The translation software on my phone was of little use, as many of these were labelled 'native vegetable'.  Eventually, I decided to chuck a new veggie in my basket each week and work out later what it was, and how best to cook it. Here is a small selection of the more unusual and the interesting ones. There are several I had seen before but never tried. Others, as I discovered in my online searches, were well-known in parts of India. I just hadn't come across them while growing up in Delhi, or my family had not experimented enough - an oversight they are now addressing as they regularly share their own funky recipes. Winged beans This is undoubtedly one of my favourite finds. I first tasted these in a delectable salad at an upmarket hotel in Bangkok. It was absolutely scrumptious and I confess, I have never been able to replicate that exact ...