Photographs

I'm not one of those people who is averse to what is generally known as 'fusion' cooking. In fact, if one thinks about the history of food then really everything is fusion cooking in one way or the other.

However, rarely do I attempt to combine things from two different food cultures -- I'm still learning, but once in a while a bit of experimenting is good. So today's dish combines two of my favourite dishes: Thai Green Curry and Italian Risotto. I'm certainly not the first person to make this dish -- there are dozens of recipes online for the same -- but I did go into it with a bit of trepidation. The results turned out pretty damn delicious, so here's my recipe.

Of late I've been trying to take more photos of the country I live in. After 12+ years of living here, and coming from a place like India that is infinitely more visually chaotic, it becomes a bit of an effort to keep boredom from setting in. I can't say I'm taking better photos here now than perhaps I ever did, and I still yearn for a place that isn't just desert and buildings and malls, but I'm trying.

Recently I finally looked into this whole cross-processing look I've always liked, and how to introduce them into my own photos. After appying the knowledge of a few tutorials and a couple of GIMP plugins and scripts (including my favourite GEGL C2G method) I've come up with these.

They're all a bit over the top -- nobody said Indians were subtle and I am, in that regard at least, 100% desi -- but I do like the strangeness the techniques bring to otherwise bland, brown and grey photos of the UAE. Here's six more examples.

As is typical, I went to IKEA for one thing and ended up with something else. In this case, the one thing was a shower curtain (which I did end up buying, though I seem to have forgotten about it) and the impulse buy was a potted chrysanthemum plant.

It was beautiful. It was cheap. I mean, really: it cost less than a coffee at Starbucks. I've shied away from keeping plants at home since I live in an apartment with not a whole lot of sunlight. In Oman we used to live in a villa which had a fairly large garden, and perhaps in envy of those times I've never considered putting some in my new concrete jungle surrounding.

Recently, however, I picked up a little basil plant, and three months later its new leaves have been tiny, but at least it hasn't died on me.

Next step, a trough-shaped planter for my sill, more herbs, and maybe even a few more flowering plants!

V

I'm very much an 80s kid. I grew up with Transformers and G.I. Joe, not Rugrats and Ed, Edd n Eddy. Though I did spend a good chunk of my childhood in the 90s, growing up in Muscat, away from the twin cultural juggernauts of India and the US, meant that some things arrived later, and stayed around more. And 80s cartoons, and a love of the toys that came with the subculture, is one of those things.