Vegan Writer: Wandering Solo, Writing with Heart, One Story at a Time
Whoever thought of making a dough, filling it with cooked chana dal and jaggery, rolling it out, cooking it on a tawa, and then eating it piping hot, was a genius.
Because I don’t know any other dish like puranpoli that’s as filling and fulfilling at the same time.
When I finally saw my favourite winter fruit with the fruit vendor, I instantly picked it up, wiped it clean on my t-shirt, and impatiently took the first bite. Yeah, yeah, I know that I need to wash it at least ten times before eating it. But some things you just can’t resist.
A few months back, I visited the restaurant Burma Burma and loved their vegan menu with its fusion concepts. I had a hearty, soul-satisfying meal at a restaurant after a long time. It’s a vegetarian restaurant but offers vegan options. I enjoyed the steamed curried buns, Mekong curry made with exotic spices complimented with sticky jasmine rice. But the star of the dinner for me was the Burmese dessert of vegan panna cotta with sago pearls and palm jaggery. One bite, and I knew I was in heaven.
One cook and five knives. No, that’s not the title of a murder mystery. It is the state of my kitchen. I cook and I have five different knives. Well, it was not intended to be a collection but somehow it has become one.
The burst of red, orange and yellow autumn hues is the first thing that caught my eyes at the Tenryu-ji temple premises. I had come to taste the Shojin ryori vegan cuisine, which was served at the Shigetsu restaurant inside the temple premises. But I got caught in the beauty of the Zen Garden around it. The autumn trees accompanied by a peaceful pond in front of it and the Arashiyama mountains standing tall behind it were picture-perfect from all sides.
When I tell people I am a Mallu (Malayali), and a vegan, people look at me with suspicious eyes. Yes, Kerala cuisine is popular for its variety of seafood and meat-based dishes being a land surrounded by the sea. Yes, Kerala is a state which leads in non-vegetarian food consumption in India. Yes, I am the only vegan in my entire family of 200 people. But trust me when I say this that Mallu cuisine (as I would like to call it) is one of the best cuisines to be vegan as it naturally has a lot of variety of vegan dishes.