This Week’s Tiffin

Singapore Noodles

Curry-kissed rice noodles tossed with vegetables — bright, fragrant, and full of flavor. A dish that is full of color against the grey of early March.

Hot & Sour Soup

Tangy, peppery(not too peppery), warming — a bowl that clears the senses without overwhelming them.

Asian Slaw

Crisp cabbage, carrots, scallions, and toasted sesame, crunchy, cool, and lightly dressed.

Pineapple Coconut Jelly

A tropical layer of textures featuring pineapple-infused agar-agar layer paired with a smooth coconut milk layer. This dessert offers a balance of citrus brightness and creamy indulgence. Think piña colada. No alcohol however.

The Story

Some weeks the kitchen humbles you — and some weeks you let it.

Cooking is organic to me: instinctive, fluid, something I can guide by smell and taste and mood.
Baking, however, has always felt like chemistry — a conspiracy between ingredients, heat, timing, energy, and whatever mood the gods are in that day.

I did not realize rasgulla lives in that in-between world: not quite cooking, not quite baking, but absolutely unforgiving.

So for the 02.13 Tiffin Club, I decided to make rasgulla — a dessert that looks deceptively simple.
Milk. Sugar. Patience.

I had never made it before. Never watched anyone make it. And I trusted my habit more than my knowledge.

What I mean by that is, I followed my usual process, I scanned the ingredients, glanced at the instructions, and then I began the process . This works 99% of the time.

This time — it did not.

What I made was… not rasgulla.
What I made was a crime. Something between rubbery pancakes and an earnest attempt at optimism.

I panicked briefly, laughed, and pivoted to plan B.
Thankfully, I had one.

Milk simmered again. Rice went in.
Kheer appeared where rasgulla refused to be.

And later, curiosity took over.
I learned that rasgulla is one of the most exacting sweets in the Indian kitchen. The milk matters. The kneading matters. The space in the pot matters.
Above all, you must trust a process you cannot yet see.

How like life.

Sometimes the kitchen teaches us not through success but through transformation.
Every failure teaches something. Every lesson sneaks into the next dish.

Memory

Some weeks the kitchen feels like the only place where I can still negotiate with the world.

Not with perfection or nostalgia — just with what I have, who I am that day, and whatever I can bring to the table.

This week isn’t about remembering childhood noodles or past joys.

It’s about the kind of memory that forms in real time: the memory of choosing to keep going, in the middle of every storm, whether it comes with snow or rain.

Spice Lore

Note of interest and truth: curry powder is not Indian.
 It’s not ancestral.
 It’s not traditional.


It’s a colonial invention — the culinary equivalent of flattening entire civilizations into a single word because it was easier for the empire to package, ship, and sell than to respect actual culture.

And here’s the truth – it was so successful that most Indians across the diaspora believe that curry powder is and always was ancestral.

Real masalas are regional, seasonal, personal, and alive.
 They shift from kitchen to kitchen, from hand to hand.


Curry powder is what happens when colonial powers reduce an entire subcontinent’s spice knowledge into one yellow powder and call it ‘authentic.’

It was never authenticity.
 It was convenience.
 It was control.


It was the West saying, ‘We don’t need your nuance.
 We’ll create our own version and train the world to believe that it’s yours.’

Notes from the Kitchen

A truce with the kitchen gods has been struck.

Every week, this little ritual reminds us that we’re not doing winter alone.