Indian Feasts!!

We having been cooking up a storm!!
In the kitchen and else where....Christmas Dinner was a great cooking class with 2 young Austrian travellers- nice to spend time with them chat and cook and know they will go home armed with our recipes to make a feast for their friends- the love flows!
Then cooking of another kind...a mate has been visiting and we have spent endless wonderful hours discussing Social Enterprise, Fairtrade, empowering women through training and job creation and core to this our love of textiles, design and creating lovely things.

She will remain a mystery for the moment but I am happily starting to work on some samples for her through our Stitching Project and in the future she will have a lovley label of gorgeous items- all with her special twist, all produced in an ethical way [quality being as important as ethical background- not like brown rice healthy---you know you eat it because it is good for you, not because it is a taste and texture sensation in your mouth]

We had a lovely early morning start for a day in Jaipur- research and the indulgence of good museums, fine block prints and lots of chin wagging!

Stay tuned, The Stitching Project is happy to work with clients to produce bespoke items.
It is the season for good produce in the market- Indian Gooseberries, fresh green chillis and lovely sun warmed red chillis , so amongst all the rest i have found time to put up a supply of pickles and sauce to last us through the year....same thing happening in the hotel kitchen to look after our customers.

For green chilli pickle, you first cut the chillis and sit them in the sun for a few days todry the edges out...feels like some alchemical process- first step infuse with sun, then add spices!!

For the Indian Gooseberry or Amla as it called in Hindi, you salt and sun infuse then add theis lovely collection of sesame oil and spice, below is my latest offerings

my version of Thai sweet chilli sauce, Amla Pickle and Green Chilli Pickle...just got to last 3 weeks for them to mature.

Do email if you would like the complete recipe.
About to run out the door, teaching in New Zealand, business in Austrlai and then a few weeks research in Ghana- yippee!!

Happy New Year