A hugely popular snack, pani puri is sold in pushcarts in the streets. Adults and children love it. The combination of flavours from sweet to tangy to spicy makes it the quintessential Indian chaat full of carefree fun and wholesome flavour. Made popular by migrant workers, pani puri carts...
Native rice varieties of Tamil Nadu seems to be everywhere yet actually only somewhere. Rice has been closely associated with the cultural life of people since the Sangam era. Tamil Nadu had a great collection of native landraces (varieties) of rice, but they all lost their importance with the...
The mention of pickles makes our taste buds mouth- watering. Pickling has been relied upon both to conserve foods and add to their flavour. No Indian meal is complete without a smidgen of pickle. Every Indian household south or North has its distinctive pickles. In recent times pickles have...
Cooking in mud pots has been there for hundreds of years. Delicious pongal immediately comes to the mind when we think of cooking in mud pots. The sun's warmth only aided in the cooking in open spaces that happens during Pongal festival. Aromatic fish curries and biryanis cooked in mud pots are...
Hill vegetables like carrot and broccoli were once considered a little exotic for common folk in Chennai. The pandemic has triggered a change in that. The wholesale vegetable market at Chennai is located at Koyambedu. Covering some 300 acres, it is among the biggest in Asia. The Koyambedu site...
Millets were once a staple food but their use gradually declined. As the population increased, high yield varieties of rice helped to feed hungry mouths. Nutrition took a back seat. Besides this, wheat was introduced during famines, and migrants brought in their own cuisines. But now the...
We eat fruits for their taste and the instant energy we get. We know that fruits are stacked with nutrients. We have our favourite fruits for their taste. But nature has endowed colours to the fruits, for a reason. It is as if nature has colour-coded fruits. The colour of the fruit signifies...
The use of flowers is not rare in Tamilian cooking. Find out the significance of edible flowers and why they’re getting back into kitchens.
Honey has been used since ancient times as a preservative, a medicine and a beauty treatment, but there are some kinds of honey that were used during wars to poison the enemy.
Just like in the West, it seems Tamil Nadu is also seeing the trend of fad diets, the latest being the Keto diet. Even as there is a trend towards traditional foods, there is also a move towards such diets from the West. While many nutritionists warn that the proportion of carbs-proteins-fats...
