The Grocery Ninja leaves no aisle unexplored, no jar unopened, no produce untasted. Creep along with her below, and read her past market missions here. So I've been peeking into other grad students' offices and using this column as a way to not look like the resident moocher. (You know, the guy who wanders around the office cadging a fistful of chips here, a cookie there, and when you ask him why he doesn't keep food in his own cubby, his response is always to pat his tummy and say: "Oh, I couldn't... I'd polish it off in seconds!" before reaching around you for an extra caramel.) Anyway, a new discovery I've made: The leverage you get when you've got... More

I love Jonathan Levitt's piece in the Boston Globe on his city's Indo-Trinidadian roti shops, where you can buy freshly-made flatbreads or wraps made from them filled with curried meat, vegetables and pickles. Rotis originated in India but have long been a staple in Trinidadian cuisine, a result of workers migrating from the subcontinent in the 1800s to the West Indies and Caribbean and bringing their foods with them. I usually avoid fusion restaurants like the plague because most of them to me feel like someone's haphazardly slapped Cuisine A together with Cuisine B, hoping that the resulting hodgepodge will bring yuppies seeking easy adventures through the door, but the cuisines of migration seem to me to always highlight... More

The Guardian's Julie Bindel talks to Camellia Panjabi, the restaurateur responsible for popularizing both regional Indian cooking to the UK as well as Szechuan and Thai food in India, about her long career in the food industry. Her seminal cookbook 50 Great Curries of India, first published in 1995, has just sold its millionth copy: "The story of the book is a fascinating one," says Panjabi. "I had tried to introduce proper regional Indian food to the hotels, but I was told, 'No one will order them.' I was convinced they would, and put real Indian dishes on the menu rather than meat swamped in curry sauce. But they didn't order them. I decided that I had to educate... More

Delhi will be hosting the Commonwealth Games in 2010 and in preparation for the grand event, the Indian Government is trying to modernise the capital (and get rid of Delhi Belly) by shutting down the 300,000 food stalls that are ubiquitous on its streets. Why is this considered such a tragedy in the making? On a teeming street corner in Chandni Chowk market, in Delhi, Dipankar Das deftly flips a paratha on to a metal plate and piles it high with steaming vegetable curry.Next to him, another street vendor stirs a giant pan of succulent jalebi — bright orange, pretzel-shaped morsels of batter soaked in syrup.For thousands of years, food stalls such as these have been an integral part... More

Janet Fletcher of the SF Chronicle got seriously obsessed with coconuts after vacationing in South India, where almost every dish she ate contained fresh grated coconut or coconut milk. She says, "For years, I have passed fresh coconuts by, not sure even how to crack one open or what to do with it if I did. But with the help of some local experts, I'm making up for lost time." High in saturated fat, nutritionists have been warning us off of coconuts for years—the University of California's even says it has "has no redeeming vitamin or mineral assets". But, she says, "Malaysians, Thais, Indians and Indonesians -- all major coconut eaters -- don't even come close to our rate... More

The Amateur Gourmet and friends take a culinary tour of Southern India by way of Saravanaas in New York City: "We begin studying our menus. They have words we've never seen before, like 'bisibelabath'." More