J3 Market!

Many of you will know me from the J3 underpass - I have been selling chai and home cooked food on my chai wallah stand since I arrived in Bristol and enjoying meeting so many people who pass through on the bicycle and foot paths.

As part of the Bristol Food Connections Festival, tomorrow will see our pop up market transform the underpass into a vibrant food market, with local produce, global street food stalls, plants, demo's, gardening activities, live music and discussion!  come down 3.30-8.30pm! Residents and local community groups have done a fantastic job at organising the market and we hope to make it a regular event.

Spring Foraging!

My father-in-law has an acre of beautiful wild land.  It was once a quarry, and in the thirty years he has owned it, he has let it grow into a young woodland.  The topsoil is still quite thin, but every year a new layer of leaves are being added, and the greenery grows higher and  higher.

My wife and I use the space to forage for nettles, cherries, hazelnuts, wild blackcurrant, elderflowers and berries, wild rose and are still discovering more!

I took the opportunity last time I visited to pick some of the nettle tops.  We cut them back periodically so we always have a supply of new young nettles.  My wife enjoys nettle tea, but I prefer to cook them up for a delicious saag.

Community Kitchen - Cookery Workshops Coming Soon!

Beautiful evening at the Community Kitchen Re-launch in Hamilton House tonight.  There was lots of delicious food, music, competitions and tastings.  I have been involved with the Community Kitchen since I attended a cookery workshop leader course, and my coursemates and I are launching our workshops at the Community Kitchen very soon!  I will be teaching north indian cuisine and cooking up a delicious vegetarian indian feast, all the workshops can be found here  and details of my first workshop on 1 April here.

Indian Spices

I love preparing indian meals with local fresh ingredients.  Right now in the UK, I am using potatoes, cauliflower, carrots, beetroot and lots of onions to make fantastic vegetarian Indian food - it really is easy to use local, seasonal produce, mixed with indian spices for low cost, healthy and nutritious food.

I will be posting recipes on this blog to start  you on your indian cooking adventure, but first of all, I thought I'd start with looking at some of the spices that make up our cuisine.

These photos were taken on a trip my wife and I took to a spice farm, it was wonderful to see how the spices grow and we are now growing some of our own on our window sills here in the UK, including ginger, cardamom and lemongrass.

Here is some cardamom growing in India - it is a very tall plant and the seeds grow near the roots.

Fragrant lemon grass.

OK, so the next two aren't spices, but were interesting to see growing, below are cashew nuts - ready to make the Goan speciality Kaju femi.

And, coffee beans!

Sharma Family

I wanted to start this blog with a tribute to my family - this is a photo of four of the Sharma brothers, taken a few years ago.  All of us are passionate about food and a good Sharma family recipe chai!!