A Thousand Feasts: Small Moments of Joy… A Memoir of Sorts – Nigel Slater
Nigel Slater has kept notebooks of curiosities and wonderings, penned while at his kitchen table, soaked in a fisherman’s hut in Reykjavik, sitting calmly in a moss garden in Japan or sheltering from a blizzard in a Vienna konditorei. Nigel records the small things, events and happenings that gave pleasure before they disappeared. In A Thousand Feasts he details a soup for breakfast, packing a suitcase for a trip and watching a butterfly settle on a carpet, hiding in plain sight. He gives short stories of feasts such as a mango eaten in monsoon rain or a dish of restorative macaroni cheese.
This funny and sharply observed collection of the good bits of life, often things that pass many of us by, is utter joy from beginning to end. Nigel hones in on the scent of a bunch of home-grown sweet peas, the sound of water breathing at night in Japan, the occasional pfuff as a tiny avalanche of snow falls from leaves.
Sometime back, I stared at my fridge, wondering what to make for dinner. I had about 2 carrots, a few potatoes, some snap peas, and half a head of cauliflower, along with some cooked black chana. I started making a dish, hoping it would turn out edible, but it was so yummy that I have been asked to make it again!
Black chickpeas, or kala chana, are one of those underrated nutritional superheroes hiding in plain sight. It’s packed with fibre, plant protein, minerals, and slow-digesting carbs, so it keeps your energy steady and your stomach happy. Kala chana is diabetic-friendly, high-protein, gut-friendly, heart-healthy, nutrient-dense, and excellent for weight control.
Hearty Vegetable & Black Chana Masala
Ingredients:
2 cups of mixed vegetables, chopped into bite-sized pieces (you can use what you have; I used carrots, potatoes, cauliflower and snap peas)
2-3 tbsp oil
1 cup black chana that has been soaked overnight and boiled until soft but firm
2 finely chopped medium-sized onions
2 finely chopped large tomatoes
1 tsp finely minced garlic
1 tsp finely minced ginger
1 tsp cumin seeds
½ tsp turmeric powder
1-2 tsp red chilli powder
1 tsp coriander powder
1 tbsp cumin powder
½ tsp garam masala powder
Salt to taste
Finely chopped coriander to garnish
Method:
Heat 2 tbsp of oil in a pan.
Add all your mixed vegetables.
Sprinkle a pinch of salt and sauté on medium-high heat until they’re about 50–60% cooked. This means they are slightly softened but still holding their shape.
Remove the vegetables with a slotted spoon and keep aside.
In the same pan, heat the remaining oil.
Add in the cumin seeds once the oil heats up.
When the cumin seeds crackle, add minced onions and sauté until golden.
Add garlic and ginger, and cook until the raw smell goes away.
Now add tomatoes and cook this down well until the masala thickens and oil starts to appear at the edges.
At this point, add in the dry spices—turmeric powder, red chilli powder, coriander powder, and cumin powder.
Sauté for 30 seconds so the spices bloom.
If the masala looks too thick or sticks to the bottom, splash a little water and keep cooking.
Tip in the half-cooked vegetables.
Add the boiled black chana.
Mix gently so everything is coated well in the gravy.
Add around ¼–½ cup of water, depending on how saucy you want it.
Cover and cook on low-medium heat for 8–10 minutes.
The vegetables should be fully cooked but still hold their shape.
The chana should be tender and absorb the masala flavours.
Finish with garam masala, coriander, and (optional) a gentle squeeze of lemon.
How to Feed the World: A Factful Guide – Vaclav Smil
In this ambitious, myth-busting book, leading scientist and internationally bestselling author Vaclav Smil investigates many of the burning questions facing the world
Why are some of the world’s biggest food producers also the countries with the most undernourished populations?
Why is food waste a colossal 1,000kcal per person daily, and how can we solve that?
Could we all go vegan and be healthy? Should we?
How will we feed the ballooning population without killing the planet?
How Food Really Works shows how we misunderstand the essentials of where our food really comes from, how our dietary requirements shape us, and why this impacts our planet in drastic ways. Ultimately, this data-based, rigorously researched guide explains how we will survive and thrive long into the future.
Red Sauce Brown Sauce: A British Breakfast Odyssey – Felicity Cloake
If there’s one thing that truly unites this country from Aberdeen to Abernethy, St Ives to St Pancras, it’s an obsession with breakfast. We all have an opinion on the merits of brown sauce versus ketchup on our morning sandwich. No other country’s culinary identity is so bound up with breakfast – the French may love their croissants, the Chinese their congee, but they’re rarely held up as national symbols in the same way as a Full English, an Ulster fry or a bowl of porridge. A good breakfast is our birth right, eaten with as much relish in the Wolsey on Piccadilly as in Terry’s Caff in Borough.
In this eagerly anticipated follow up to One More Croissant for the Road, Felicity Cloake sets off on an epic bike ride round Britain to celebrate and investigate the legendary Great British Breakfast. She rates fry-ups on criteria from the crispness of the bacon to how long they keep her pedalling and stops for fact-based tea-breaks in place of last time’s pause cafe. And a woman cannot live by All Day Breakfast alone, so as well as recipes for things like Omelette Arnold Bennett or proper porridge, she will report back on the delights of regional specialities she encounters along the way, from Lancashire hotpot to Welsh cakes, Balti to boxty and everything else that takes her fancy en route. All washed down with tea, naturally.
From the less celebrated breakfast items that often cause puzzlement to visitors abroad – baked beans on toast, for example, or Marmite or Weetabix – to the homely foods of different communities, the halwa puris and Polish rye breads, grilled plantain and century eggs, Felicity will take them all in. Her mission is to eat all the best breakfasts of Britain – whether a crumpet hot from the factory production line in Enfield or a desi breakfast in Birmingham or even a pease pudding stottie cake from the original Greggs in Gosforth, this will be a true tour of Britain. And Britain is a country that runs on breakfast.
Belonging to the family of kuzambus, Iru Puli Kuzambu is what results from sambar and mor kozambu marrying and having a baby! I heard about this kozambu in the WhatsApp group of the retirement community my parents live in, and everyone was raving about this dish. I was intrigued and decided to find out more.
This is one of those deeply comforting dishes that manages to be both rustic and complex. It’s a beautiful example of heritage Tamil Brahmin cuisine, particularly from the Iyer households of the Thanjavur and Tirunelveli regions. The name “Iru Puli” literally means “two kinds of sourness,” traditionally referring to the combination of tamarind, or puli, and buttermilk, or mor, which are used in the same dish. That’s what makes it unique: it layers tanginess in a way that’s both subtle and rounded.
Iru Puli Kuzambu is considered a heritage recipe, often cooked on special occasions or when families want to use up leftover buttermilk without waste, a very Tamil way of resourcefulness. Many households in the Cauvery delta region, especially in Kumbakonam, Mayavaram, and Tirunelveli, still make this dish exactly as their grandmothers did, without onions, as part of the pathiya samayal or satvik style.
I made it slightly differently because I only had baby onions or sambar onions and white pumpkin at home. You can use any vegetable you use for a sambar, but if you want to go traditional, then don’t use onions or garlic in this recipe.
Iru Puli Kuzhambu
Ingredients:
3 cups peeled and cubed vegetables
Lemon-sized ball of tamarind, soaked in warm water for 20-30 minutes
½ cup yoghurt, beaten well
½ tsp turmeric powder
Salt to taste
¼ cup fresh grated coconut
4-5 dried red chillies (adjust according to the chilli’s heat and your spice tolerance)
¼ tsp fenugreek or methi seeds
½ tsp raw rice, soaked in water for 20-30 minutes
½ tsp mustard seeds
5-6 curry leaves
⅛ tsp asafoetida
Oil as required
Method:
Extract the water from the tamarind pulp and keep it aside.
Whisk the yoghurt and add some water to thin it, and keep it aside.
Drain the water from the rice and keep it aside.
In a small pan, add 1 tsp of oil, and once the oil warms up, add the fenugreek seeds and then the red chillies. Let them sauté for a few seconds until the fenugreek seeds turn golden brown. Keep aside.
Add this to a mixer along with the drained rice and coconut and grind into a fine paste. Add water as needed.
In the same pan, add 2 tsp oil and add the mustard seeds and let them sputter. Then add the curry leaves and let them crisp a bit.
Now add the vegetables you plan to use. Sauté for a few seconds, then add the turmeric powder and asafoetida, and continue to sauté.
Add 1 cup of water and salt, and let the vegetables cook until they are 50% done.
Now add the tamarind water and cook for an additional five minutes, until the raw smell of the tamarind has dissipated.
Now add the ground paste, mix well, and add more water if the kuzhambu is thick.
Let this come to a rolling boil and cook for another 3-5 minutes.
Lower the flame and add the whisked yoghurt. While adding in the yoghurt, make sure you are continuously stirring the kuzhambu.
As the kuzambu comes to a boil, let it boil for a minute and switch off the flame.
Serve with rice and any curry of your choice.
Note: The key to this dish is balance. Too much tamarind and the yoghurt flavour disappears; too much yoghurt and it becomes mor kuzhambu. The ideal ratio is about 2:1 tamarind to buttermilk.
