Best laid plans: Bestie and husband finally make it for dinner!

After months and months of plotting, planning, (re)scheduling, Married Ashi and Married Aditi finally managed to meet up this weekend along with their better halves! 

Needless to say a night full of fun, laughter and music ensued culminating with dinner at our place (or a very early breakfast) at 2 am! After staying up all night the previous day, I wasn't really sure I could pull off any serious cooking so decided to keep experimentation at a minimum. 

The menu consisted of good old tried and tested favourites - onion garlic dip with lavash, sauteed mushrooms, penne aglio olio (poor cousin of the original spaghetti version) and beer chicken with garlic bread and mashed potatoes. Any excursion into the kitchen is incomplete (and oh-so-boring!) without some experimentation so warm corn salad and paella were brought in to the menu. The meal was rounded off with the universal (and my favourite) favourite, caramel custard!

Starter - Warm corn salad

Mains - Penne aglio olio style

Mains - Sautéed mushroom and broccoli

Mains - Beer chicken with mashed potatoes

Mains - Veg. Paella

Dessert - Caramel custard

I'd promised Ashi I'd invite her over for a meal before leaving Mumbai and I'm glad I could work through the fog of forsaken sleep to bring some respectable grub to the table!

P.S. - I was beginning to wonder if I had lost my culinary skills when bam, this beautiful day came along and I can honestly say I was proud of everything we had served up. Thank you food gods!

P.S. 2 - Staying up all night and running across town to catch the sunset is great for honing cooking skills. Who knew?!

Drunken fruits: Sangria love!

Anybody who knows me well enough knows how much I love sangria. 

White wine, red wine, rose all types of sangria work for me. Wine soaked apples, green apples, oranges, green grapes, purple grapes, pomegranate, lime, passion fruit, strawberries all are welcome to my glass(es)/jugs/pitchers of sangria! 

Home made white wine sangria with green grapes

Drunken fruits - remains of home made red wine sangria with purple grapes and apples 

The best Sunday afternoons are spent in the company of the husband and sister and glass(es) of sangria; cooking with sangria, watching TV with sangria, eating while sipping sangria, singing with sangria, listening to music with sangria! The first thing prepared on Sangria Sundays (even before the morning glass of hot water and lime!) is the perfect pitcher of wine and fruits followed by an interminable wait for the fruits to get suitably 'drunk'!

Dia sparkling white wine sangria with strawberries (super yum, super easy to make!)

While I am a big fan of homemade sangrias for the simple reason that there is ample room for experimentation, my favourite sangrias are found at Cafe Mangii for the freshness of the fruit, Woodside Inn for the yummiest sangria and Indigo Deli for the potent(est) and most interesting sangria combinations and Ivy for the pitchers!

Green apple sangria at Indigo Deli

What are your favourite sangria flavours? Where should we head next for some more super sexy sangrias? Do let me know in the comments below.

In the meanwhile, cheers, let's drink to that!

Food Memories: Instant Noodles

Over my 29 years of eating food, the one thing I have learnt is food unlocks memories.

As I sit slurping my Wai Wai noodles, I am transported almost 10 years back to hungry days spent as a resident of the LSRH (Lady Shri Ram College for Women Hostel, for the uninitiated). To days where noodles, especially Wai Wai, were a source of nutrition and sustenance  A steaming cup of Wai Wai or Wai Wai with ice cold water (depending on the weather) was our constant companion whether listening to music with friends, sitting in the common room, staying up all night with oil in our hair or cramming for the dreaded exams.

Steaming hot lemon noodles from the cafe are reminiscent of long walks in the back lawns with my closest friend and companion in food adventures, till all that stopped the day we discovered lemon noodles had prawn flavoured salt in them, she being a vegetarian!

Cup-o-Noodles brought back images of Anisha Kapur's drawers full of Thai junk food that brightened up our days during my first job.

Seeing the familiar Wai Wai packet at the neighbourhood supermarket unlocked long forgotten memories, memories which I didn't even know I had!

P.S. - The extremely familiar bright yellow pack next to Wai Wai took me back to the day I was first introduced to junk food but that's a post for another day...