Kitchen Tips

Sunday afternoons at home had a smell, and it was garlic. Ami would spread a newspaper across the kitchen table, tip out a kilo of garlic and a mound of ginger, and we would all be conscripted — peeling, chatting, complaining, listening to the radio — until two steel bowls stood full and the blender …

My dadi ground her garam masala on a flat stone in the courtyard, sitting cross-legged with the sil-batta between her knees, and the smell reached the gate before the sound did. Neighbors timed their visits around it, I am fairly sure. Her proportions were never written down — they lived in her hands, a fistful …

The first time I cooked dinner for my in-laws, I made a genuinely good chicken curry and a pot of rice that set into one solid, steaming brick. My mother-in-law, who is a kind woman, cut her portion with the edge of her spoon the way you would slice a cake, and nobody said a …

My ami has a test she runs on every new bahu in the family, and it’s not about cooking — it’s about the masala dabba. She opens your spice box, takes a sniff of the haldi, and her face tells you everything. The first time she did it to me, she closed the lid, looked …