Fiddleheads!

That’s the evocative name given to edible fern fronds that curl out of the forest floor in spring. They’re beautiful to look at, and are considered one of the delicacies of the season. With a flavour that’s reminiscent of asparagus and artichoke with woodsy notes of moss, they are quite the tasty mouthful.

I eat fiddleheads in very modest quantities, however, and only a couple of times in a season at most. The reason?  Well, as Langdon Cook asks  about bracken fern in Fat of the Land, “To eat or not to eat?”

Continue reading →

Springtime means it’s spot prawn season in Vancouver!

Kicking off on the 5th of May (watch the first catch being hauled in) with the 6th Annual Spot Prawn Festival, for us prawn lovers it’s two months of glorious indulgence in one of the most delicious things to come out of our neck of the Pacific. Spot prawns (or spot shrimp, if you prefer) have a clean sweetness to them, and the succulent flesh makes for very satisfying eating with minimal cooking and seasoning, though I draw the line at eating them straight out of the water!

Besides enjoying them as sashimi, with creamy pasta sauces, in salads, grilled and dripping with garlicky butter, I can’t resist the temptation to cook them in a myriad Indian ways. And thanks to the long harvesting season, it’s possible to try out plenty of recipes featuring these luscious crustaceans at their freshest and best.

Here’s a spot prawn curry I recently made, based on a simple Coorg fish curry recipe.

Continue reading →

A little thunder, a spattering of gentle rain on dry soil and leaves, the fragrance of kulae puttu steaming gently in a sekala. That, for me, is the essence of May in Coorg. Pre-monsoon showers have appeared and, with jackfruit season in full swing in India, I’m sure there’s kulae puttu being made in homes across Coorg. Sigh!

My grandmother made kulae puttu in industrial quantities to cater to the hordes of grandchildren who just couldn’t get enough of them. Well, those of us who liked jackfruit, that is. Fortunately, these luscious, sweet steamed cakes are almost as easy to make as to make disappear.

Kulae puttu is steamed in a leaf wrapper, which makes it even more alluring. As with anything cooked in a wrapper, opening up that fragrant parcel is one of life’s sweet pleasures. Again, unless of course, you don’t like jackfruit!

Jackfruit are loosely classed into barké and kulae varieties. The former are the kind with crisp flesh, while kulae chekké tends to be stringy and very sticky. The latter is the kind generally preferred for making kulae puttu.

Continue reading →