KFC doesn’t want you licking your fingers. “That thing we’ve been saying for 64 years? Ignore it,” says the fast food brand in its newest campaign that’s appropriate for this pandemic.

On Durga Pujo, the lives of the big-eyed, gentle-faced, and maach-guzzling Bengalis are marred by a potent shadow of the world’s most deadly dose of ABC – ambol (acidity), bodhojom (indigestion), and constipation.

Jiggs Kalra, the flamboyant chef, changed the way we looked at Indian food – how it could be cooked and consumed. He put a bit of Kashmir in Kanyakumari and Bengal in Bombay.

“Idli are the most boring things in the world,” tweeted Edward Anderson, a UK professor of history and expert in India-Britain studies. All hell broke loose. Anderson was schooled by angry Indians on Twitter over his blasphemous opinion – even Shashi Tharoor got involved.

Dev, a 13-year-old desi contestant on the ongoing Junior MasterChef Australia, has left judges and viewers thoroughly impressed. Born and raised in Australia, he prepared a platter of Lamb Mughlai Curry, saffron rice, cucumber raita, coriander chutney, & smoked chicken kebab – all within 75 minutes.

Don’t be a douchebag to your hungry homies fasting during Ramzan and pester them with stupid queries such as “Do you feel weak?”, or “Isn’t fasting old-fashioned?” or “Don’t you cheat-eat?”

Gujaratis inherit a penchant for "food terrorism". There were Gujarati kids at school who wouldn’t drink “jhoota” water in case it had been touched by a meat eater. And there was my grandmother who’d remind me that I was Jain every time I’d go for an evening snack.

Turn your plain old masala Maggi into crunchy spring rolls with this easy recipe.

Last month, when Alps, a four-decade-old beer bar at Colaba, shut down unannounced, no one seemed to instantly notice. It didn’t warrant blockbuster social media obituaries like Cafe Zoe did. That’s the thing about Alps, it never hankered for attention or loyalty. It just waited until it earned it.

The mythology of food in India is storied and the best fables revolve around pregnancy. Twins, some believe, are the result of eating twin bananas – fruit that has the power to impregnate a man.

The humble varan bhaat toop is as versatile and ubiquitous as Radhika Apte’s appearances on Netflix. Sometimes it is plain simple comfort food, at other times it’s part of an elaborate offering to Bappa. A love for varan bhaat toop is the epitome of Maharashtrian-ness.

We seem to have become intolerant to the very foods that used to be household staples – butter, cheese, milk, and rotis! Has something truly changed, or as my mom would say, are we just trying new ways to push up our cool quotient?

Life is not a Quora thread and hence not all teetotallers have grand backstories that involve prisons, arrests, and a dozen deaths. Sometimes our reasons are as simple as we don’t friggin’ like alcohol. So stop urging us to “loosen up and embrace the times”.

Maharashtrian cuisine is endlessly diverse. Puneri cuisine is very different from food from Konkan, Vidarbha, or Kolhapur. Within these cuisines, lie the differences of caste and class. But the problem with Sachin Kundalkar’s Gulabjaam is that it doesn’t acknowledge any of this.

Most middle-class Bengali families such as mine are moderately open-minded. You can make honest confessions to them about your vices and hope for a friendly ear, but never about your vegetarianism.

I miss the days when my big family, all 25 of us, travelled on a train to Goa for a winter break. But what I miss the most is the train-wallah tomato soup with a side of croutons.

The reason I love sorpotel so much could be because it was my first solid meal. Legend has it my mum ran out of baby food so my grandmother turned sorpotel and khichdi into Cerelac on crack and fed it to me. Even today, there is nothing more comforting than a steaming bowl of khichdi, accentuated with a few tablespoons of the luscious curry.

Even in the coldest of Finnish winters the comfort of ghar ka khana can warm your heart enough to brave the sharp chill in the air and the stinging ice in your face. And nobody understood that better than my maa.

For most people I know, it’s impossible not to get lost in nostalgia at the mere mention of Parle-G. The biscuit was my diabetic grandfather’s favourite treat. And the only way to get my school watchmen to open the gates and let you inside after the morning bell was with bribes of Parle-G.

Ask any TamBrahm, and they would swear by their kula deivam (family God) that not wrapping up a meal with thayir-sadam (curd rice) and some lemon pickle is enough to get you ostracised.

On a good day, RoohAfza tastes like a vampire’s tonic that drowned itself in a vat of sugar. On a bad day, it tastes like pulverised incense stick. What then is the hype really about?

For Indians, our idea of expressing love and happiness hinges on cooking and sharing sugar-dunked delicacies. One of life’s greatest pleasures is enjoying piping hot gulab jamuns on a chilly winter night. How do we reconcile this with studies that have anointed sugar the sweet kiss of death?

You've tried noodles inside a dosa, but have you tried a dosa made from noodles? Presenting Maggi Masala Dosa!

Despite being from a cosmopolitan family, I realised that every day, I was unwittingly consuming our caste on my plate. In the game of kitchen politics, caste is a far more deeply riven divide, than the differences between North and South Indian food.

Food videos have become my proxy to fulfilling all my cooking-related desires without involving actual cooking.

The prize for fasting is the feast. Now there are feasts, and there is iftar, a meal so elaborate that it gives other religions #feastinggoals.

In a lockdown that has seen some truly questionable culinary innovations like Chocolate Maggi and Oreo Bhajiyas, Chyawanprash ice cream just raised the stakes.

A potato-less diet makes me a social misfit in Kolkata. You can take the egg from the roll, but there’s no way to take the aloo from the posto.

In India, poverty isn’t just a state of mind, and paisa-vasooli is a way of life. Yet, people buy an extra birthday cake, just to smash it gleefully in some unfortunate soul’s face. What gives?