Chef Hari Nayak, author of ‘My Indian Kitchen’ shares three delicacies from his book – two of them can be complete meals in themselves – one for the non-vegetarians – Coconut Shrimp Biryani, from Goa. The other is a rice dish much beloved by vegetarians – Black Eyed Peas and Rice or Lobiya Pullao. And what better ending to a meal than to top this satisfying meal with Pistachio Mango Ice Cream?
This Spring there were hugs and handclasps galore as New York’s rich and powerful mingled in the beautifully lit up Cipriani Wall Street which is located, appropriately enough, in the Financial District where so many fortunes are made.
Over 500 movers and shakers had gathered to applaud another great performance in the art of giving. The occasion was American India Foundation’s 10th year Gala to felicitate not the biggest spenders – but the biggest givers of them all, the leading philanthropists.
‘The ‘Emperor of All Maladies’, subtitled A Biography of Cancer, won the Pulitzer Prize for Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee. This week it won the 2011 PEN/E.O Wilson Literary Science Writing Award. An interview with this award-winning author about the writing of the book.
The challenge of ‘The Emperor of All Maladies’ was that in taking on such a formidable foe, Mukherjee had to create a complex tapestry which was by no means linear. It went all over the map, backwards, forwards, even sideways, zig-zagging between the impersonal and the very personal, between a clinical trial with 10,000 patients to the emotional tale of one particular patient. “The challenge was to take all that and make narrative out of it – it really is the most invisible thing in the book, it is the bones of the book,” says Siddhartha Mukherjee.
“This dish is one of the favorites on our appetizer list at Junoon. Its origins are in Goan cooking which evolved with considerable influence from the Portuguese who used Goa as a trading port for many years” Chef Vikas Khanna of Junoon
Are you a lover of contemporary Indian art who always thought collecting art was beyond your means?
Did you think you’d have to mortgage your house – and sell your soul – to obtain an MF Husain?
Were you always intimidated by the art auctions which seemed so elitist and such a closed club?
Well here’s Anu Nanavati Chaddha, Director of Saffronart in New York, to show the path to newbie collectors and to answer all the questions you had about contemporary Indian art – but were afraid to ask.
Long Island was once an Indian stronghold (native Indian, to be precise) – well now the Indians from India are making their mark there, what with the burgeoning Indian population, academics at various area universities, not to mention an overload of Indian grocery stores, sari boutiques, and the occasional Bollywood extravaganzas at Nassau Coliseum.
So now it’s pretty sweet that the mainstream is also recognizing this newest population – and its cinematic contributions. The recent Gold Coast International Film Festival organized by the Great Neck Arts Center on the North Shore of Long Island, gave a nod to the Indian film industry with several screenings of India-related films.
Project Chirag began as a student-run organization in Free Enterprise at H.R. College of Commerce & Economics in Mumbai. Since its inception, the Project has purchased solar equipment, trained and hired paraplegic Indians to assemble the parts, and then installed the panels and lanterns in thousands of households across Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Karnataka.
Asian Garden of Many Delights – every table was decorated by a different designer and the dinner menu was designed by Chef Hemant Mathur of Tulsi and his wife, the equally talented pastry chef Surbhi Sahni of Bittersweet NYC.
Bold-face names and big accomplishments amid the opulence of New York’s Waldorf-Astoria – the perfect place for The Light of India Awards, the first ever major recognition of NRI movers and shakers by Remit2India, a Times Group company. Over 200 of the who’s who of the South Asian community gathered to pay tribute to their own, the doers and dreamers of the corporate, business, arts and technology world
Anand Giridharadas’s ‘India Calling’ – evocative and insightful – is almost a road map to the New India which has so much of the old India mixed in it. The book has been re-introducing young Indian-Americans to the land many left as children or may have never seen. Then there is the older generation of Indian-Americans who came as immigrants many years ago and still see the India they left decades ago, frozen in time.