Indian Food Adventures

I have the most wonderful opportunity. Thanks to my partner, who has secured a secondment to a children's charity, we are going to live in India. I have jacked in my job and am packing up the flat to move over in just a weeks time.

The setup that we have back home, plus the complications in Indian visas mean that for the first time since I was 15 years old, I will not be working. Not between jobs - unemployed. Nor will I be a lady who lunches, that's just not very me. What I will be doing is immersing myself in the world of Indian food - which is thankfully very very naturally gluten free.

If we had been moving to another part of Asia such as China, there would have been many more barriers to temporarily moving our lives. However Indian food - across its rich and diverse regions - wheat, barely and rye seem to be used solely for making breads and the odd fried delicacy. Cooking methods have remained largely traditional, using onion purees or reductions for sauces, and where flours are required, the flavoursome rice and gram (lentil) flours are drafted in for fritters and pancakes.

This makes me so excited, you can't imagine!

At home we have some form of Indian food at least once a week - either I cook something from scratch: Aloo Gobi and Tarka Dhal being two favourites, or we pay a visit to our much loved Tandoori Nights. The chance to learn about Indian food, and visit the plantations of spices and ingredients is a dream come true!

Mixed up with the excitement of researching cookery classes, markets and restaurants I also have to complete visa's, book flights, get vaccines and pack up the house. We could and hope to be gone for as long as six months, plus there are friends to say farewell to. So this is my quite exciting excuse as to my absence from this site...

It's pretty much guaranteed that these pages over the next few months will be rich with Indian food adventures - whatever they may be. I have never stepped onto the continent before, so who knows what I will find.

In the mean time, if you know of a fabulous cookery school, restaurant, must-do food experience let me know....