Featured Post

Seville

By -
Image
SEVILLE Sevilla After living up to some wonderful moments at Granada, the birthplace of the renowned Spanish poet and playwright Federico Garcia Lorca, we decided to further our coadventure through the heartland of the southern Iberian Peninsula, composed of lowlands, mountains and valleys. You’ve got it right. To arrive at Seville, we traversed the fascinating Spanish heartland. The landscape presented some vistas composed of rustic plains, lowlands, winding roads through the Sierra and then vast stretches of olive orchards. About 200 years back, a couple of decades after Napoleon’s army plundered and destroyed parts of Alhambra, an American diplomat and writer, Washington Irving and his Russian counterpart traversed the path from Seville to Granada. It was highly adventurous then, because of the fact that the transport system at that time was horse-drawn carriages and muleteers. It was such that they could ‘wander among the romantic mountains of Andalusia’ (Tales of Alhamb...
Post a Comment

ROMAN HOLIDAY PART1

By -

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Wazwan in Kashmir - more on GREAT TASTES

By -
Image
Great Tastes - Wazwan Where better to fall in love with wazwan than in Kashmir? In October 2013, I visited this beautiful valley along with my wife for the first time in my life. Through all the breathtaking natural beauty, the rolling green mountains and valleys, and snow-peaked horizons, my focus, my greatest love, never wavered from the fantastic culinary tradition of this mountain state. Many things combined to create the mouthwatering wazwan Kashmir is so rightly famed for—from the Mughal past, where Emperors commissioned some of the most romantic baghs (gardens in the world), made as the earthly template of heaven, and were also incurable gourmands who searched far and wide for great chefs and gave them their one-point agenda: create exceptional dishes. Kashmir’s wonderful climate, which allows the growing of a mind-boggling variety of beautiful nuts, fruits, vegetables, and spices, including saffron, the world’s most expensive spice, played an equally c...
Read more

food - great tastes

By -
Image
IN SEARCH OF TASTE - A TALE OF FOUR CITIES A food aficionado’s mouthwatering journey over the years in cities he lived. Read  Rana's memoir with food. Cooking has been regarded as one of the greatest arts right from the time of Julius Caesar. Although elements of the art of cooking are easy to define, I have discovered over the years that the tastes which still linger on my tongue are the tastes that mattered. In that respect, my nanny still remains unbeatable as the greatest cook in my life. We called her ‘nannabhai’ derived from the Bengali word ‘ranna’ for cooking. Be it a simple Hilsa egg fry or peas pulao or stuffed chicken or quail (bater) roast, mutton, or chicken stew the food always used to be a gastronomical delight. My mother inherited some of her skills and tickled our senses with dishes like Tomato fish, Mutton kofta curry, and Pudding. Now it's my wife who has mastered the art of tickling my senses. Her talent for improvisation has created a...
Read more

A Roman Holiday

By -
Image
ROMA - Ancient Rome & Papal Rome Imagine going back 2000 years in time and space while standing on the stone floor inside a colossal amphitheater. Amidst thousands of Roman spectators. The booms of drums reverberate as the ceremonial parade enters the stadium. After saying ‘Ave imperator; morituri te salutant’ (those who are about to die salute you) to the Emperor, the gladiatorial combat begins. The crowd shouts jeers and throw their hands up in excitement. 60000 spectators? Like the excitement at Eden Gardens in Calcutta while watching a Cricket match. The gestures, the excitement, the uproar may be different from our present-day Mexican waves. But how does that matter? After all, a stadium is a venue for entertainment – be it the bloodiest sport in the history of mankind. And how the Romans loved watching violence and killings. Historians remain befuddled as to how Romans who are regarded as the precursor of human civilization could have indulged and e...
Read more

ISTANBUL WAS CONSTANTINOPLE

By -
Image
ISTANBUL                                                                                                                                                                            (Part II)           ...
Read more