Hello!

I’ve just wrapped up a big season of fresh recipes for you. Next week, we’ll kick off the new collection with something easy and sweet. Hint: You’ll need lemons. 🍋

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The Flavor Files
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I am so excited to share my plans for this SUBSTACK with you! I love sending my weekly newsletter to you guys and sharing my recipes and research. I want to build a community where we can all interact and share ideas, reviews, flavors, and menus. We will take advantage of the chat feature and have personal conversations about specific topics we are pass…
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22 days ago · 25 likes · 2 comments · Nik Sharma

If you haven’t listened to The Food Chain’s episodes on the joy of feeding birds and ghostwriters, I urge you to. As topics, they’re indirectly related, but I enjoyed listening to them on my walks with Paddington this week. The impact of birds on our lives and the new research surrounding humans feeding them was enlightening. If you’ve ever wondered how restaurant chefs and celebrities write cookbooks, the ghostwriters’ episode is the one you’ll want to listen to.
I started out looking into researching bundt cakes for a future newsletter but got side-tracked by the fascinating history of bundt cake pans at Atlas Obscura and now eagerly want to try the “Tunnel of Fudge” cake.
At The Strategist, I shared some of my favorite spice mills and grinders at home.
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The Weekly Menu

Fried Rice with Pickles

Fried rice is comfort food, and its versatility makes it shine; it’s easy to tweak and use whatever ingredients you’ve got on hand and need to use up. This version uses chopped-up pickles for a spot of briny flavor and crispy fried onions for crunchiness.

Lamb Do Piaza

Lamb do-piaza (sometimes also written as do-pyaza) involves braising onions and lamb slowly over low heat until the onions turn brown and fall apart and the meat turns tender. The words do-piaza or do-pyaza are translated to “twice the onions” and refer to the use of a large number of onions and the addition of the onions at two stages of cooking. This recipe originated from the kitchens of the Moghul Empire in India and was used to prepare goat, but lamb works just as well in this recipe, and this is how I make this dish at home.

Shahi Tukda Bread Pudding

Shahi tukda, or the royal morsel, is a sweet created in the Moghul Empire's kitchens but might have deeper ties to the ancient Egyptian dessert, Um Ali. This version is a little different; it’s a baked bread pudding with all those delicious flavors from the classic combination of cardamom, saffron, and rose water and is served with a big scoop of vanilla or cardamom ice cream. Pay attention to how the tastes change with the simultaneous dance of heat and cold with every spoonful.

Have a great weekend,

xx

Nik

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