Indian tapas and refreshing cocktails – Diwali preparations with ASDA’s cook-along

Popular food bloggers Radhika Howarth and Kripa Dewani came together and created mouth-watering Diwali recipes for ASDA’s virtual cook-along event to get everyone feeling festive for a different kind of Diwali this year. Diwali is a time of merriment, joy, sparkling lights, fun family traditions and of course festive food. While this year Diwali will be different, it can still...

Open Oven: Baking it Even!

With the world witnessing a paradigm shift, food still holds fort as a constant source of relief. Entrepreneurial ventures stocking on comfort and utility food has become the need of the hour. One such immensely popular bakery in Kolkata, India is the Open Oven Bakery. Instituted by Reshma Sengupta, Open Oven has been supplying tasty and healthy baked food...

Lockdown Diaries: The power of easy-to-make vegan gluten-free pitaya energy balls

I was not a vegan all my life. My journey began after my lovely daughters Nurbanu (26) and Farin (21) turned vegan about five years back and inspired me to do the same, especially when I started experiencing a lot of muscular pain. They pointed out that I was overall following a rather unhealthy diet. Even though they were...

Lockdown Diaries: Oli Khan’s Surma Takeaway to distribute thousands of free hot meals to frontline workers in the UK

The holy month of Ramadan 2020 will be remembered in history for coinciding with one of the worst pandemics of all time, and this has changed the way Ramadan is being observed globally this year. However this has not dampened the spirit of compassion and generosity during this sacred time. Celebrated chef Oli Khan FRSA and Surma takeaway in Stevenage have...

Lockdown Diaries: Restauranteur Chinten Pandya supports NHS workers and the needy with free Indian meals

Chinten Pandya, a civil engineer and restaurant owner of Desi Dhaba, had to close his businesses following the government's guidelines but he and his wife Mona have never been busier. They are using his Feb-launched restaurant to feed hundreds of NHS workers, the vulnerable and needy in the community. The Wembley-based Director of Apna Construction Ltd. has turned the restaurant...

Lockdown Diaries: Teenager Jai Aswani on a mission to feed the hungry in India by collecting 100 tonnes of food grains

Our initiative Mission 100 Tonnes was born out of distress calls we received from old age homes, orphanages, and pet shelters in Chennai, during the government-imposed lockdown in India three weeks back. Since then, there has been no looking back for us. The number of marginalised people requiring help during the unprecedented time of the COVID-19 outbreak has increased...

Lockdown Diaries: Senior journalist Senthil Chengalvarayan shares a Chicken Badun recipe to impress your wife

The coronavirus pandemic has changed the world in massive ways. Pollution has dropped, community spirit is up, and the importance of general hygiene has been given the prominence it rightly deserves. An interesting trend that's popped up is that a lot of men, particularly in cultures where it's traditionally the woman's role to cook, have taken up cooking. They are...

A bowl of traditional Goan Vonn to celebrate Easter

Growing up in the cosmopolitan city of Mumbai in India, I very unwittingly was initiated into our rich heritage of Goan and Indian traditions. Goa - The Portuguese ruled over this beautiful state of sun and gorgeous beaches for almost 450 years up until 1961! That meant that our Goan cuisine and the states religious beliefs had Portuguese influences as...

Lockdown Diaries: story of the peas egg bhurji and tawa paratha, scrambled up in ten minutes

For a Guju like me, the ultimate "comfort food" is DBRS (daal-bhaat-rotli-shaak or daal, chawal, roti, sabji, or lentils, rice, Indian bread and veggies for the uninitiated). But if there is one more food item which provides the ultimate warmth of home cooked food and that long lingering ghar-ka-khana taste (home-style taste) on your taste buds, that is Vimla Aunty's...

Vanilla cupcakes with cream-cheese frosting baked to perfection by a 5-year-old

The spread of the horrific Coronavirus that originated in China has reached Canadian borders, with the Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s wife, Sophie Gregoire, testing positive for COVID-19. She is one of the over 8000 cases recorded on Canadian soil so far, and while 1200 people have recovered, more than a 100 have lost their lives to the virus. Like many countries across...