Wanderberry Tales

It is not just the architecture of Italy that captivates the hearts, the luscious greens spread across acres of countryside is equally alluring. After our tryst with Rome and the Vatican , we set out to Florence to explore the serenity of the country.  This was the part we were really looking forward in our Italy trip. We had reservations on Frecciarossa - high speed trains that connects the provinces in Italy. We got a free upgrade and hence traveled business class to Florence.  You get free upgrades on the Trenitalia website during non peak hours if you book early.  On reaching Florence (Firenze SMN station) we first took a bus to the airport. Then from the airport we need to take a shuttle to car rental agency,  from where we rented the car. The car rental agency has counters for different car rental companies like Hertz, Europcar, etc etc. Shibin had pictured himself driving a quaint little Fiat in the countryside. After spending quite a bit of time with the pap

Shibin's office shifted about a year back. Earlier, he had to invariably walk through a supermarket twice a day. ( shortcut, instead of having to walk two more blocks and go all the way around the building). Twice a day includes one crawling and the other running - crawling to the office ( everyone crawls in the morning especially during the beginning of the week) and running out of it in the evenings (It is my belief that he ran to meet me :P). In the process, it is hard to ignore those items that stare at you from the shelves beckoning you to pick them or those that scream out offers  or the ones that flatter you with the lighting .  So atleast once a week, he came home with a treat to my delight. I am still a kid at heart, such treats fascinate me . Anyways with the shifting of his office to a core business area , there were no more supermarkets to pass through and there went my treats. He comes home empty handed these days! If you are wondering why I chose to tell this

If you are a malayalee, then you must be quite familiar with the Kerala Banana which is an integral part of a malayalee household. Breakfast, lunch or even snacks, if you love them, you always have a way incorporate it into your food. Raw banana is thinly sliced and fried to make the popular Kerala banana chips( yes, the very same chips you ask your malayalee friend to get when they come back from their vacation). The ripe banana is good eaten as is or if you do not like the taste there are always ways to modify it. Crisp it up by battered deep frying it, make payasam for your sadya, halwa, kaipola , pullisery, unnakkaya and a healthier option of simply boiling it or jazz it up with a little butter and sugar. If you are looking for something quick with minimal ingredients, then this is the recipe for you - a frequent dish at our place be it breakfast or evening snacks. Here you go - Ingredients Banana - 2 Ghee - 2 - 4 tbsp Sugar - 1 tbsp Method Slice the bananas

I have already written two parts of our Italy travel ( if you have missed it, you can always find it here ). After every travel, as a tradition we publish a recipe from that region. So before moving onto the third segment of our travelogue, we have for you a dish that we learnt as a part of cooking class in Tuscany. Cantucci is a type of biscuit that is double baked to get the crunchy exterior. However you could also choose to have the softer version by avoiding the second bake and that is totally up to you. It is commonly a dinner dessert in Italy paired with wine. For us, it simply formed our tea time snacks. The recipe isn't all that time consuming and can be whipped up in under an hour or may be even lesser. I have to admit the end product was simply hard to take hands off from - you just end up going back for more. Here is the recipe for you. Recipe courtesy - Elizabetta, La Guida Farm House, Sinalunga, Italy Ingredients All purpose flour - 500 gm Sugar - 200