Tag: medieval india

Recipes: The Essence of the Past

One of my favorite dishes to make on a cold or rainy day is Rasam. Rasam in Tamil means juice, extract, or essence. Rasa in Sanskrit has a similar meaning. Many South Indian languages also call this dish Saaru (juice).

If you google rasam recipes, you will find variations with tomatoes. But for an authentic medieval Indian rasam, you skip the tomatoes and chilies (which didn’t arrive in India until much later). Instead, use: tamarind, cumin, coriander, toor dal, curry leaves, ghee, ginger, and the true star of the era, black pepper.

It is interesting to note that tomatoes originally grew in the Andean region of South America. After being brought to India by Portuguese traders, they were adopted so widely that they now appear in many traditional cuisines. The same is true for chilies, another produce from the Americas that has become a staple of Indian cooking.

Pictured below is a boiling pot of rasam I made recently with tomatoes, before I garnished it with chopped cilantro.

Charting the River’s Next Course

I’m back to outlining Book Two in The Prophesied Prince series! That means re-reading Child of the River, going through my notes to track the timeline, character ages, and all the minor characters—where they were last and what threads need to be picked up.

Child of the River Cover

Right now, I’m creating a rough outline of what happens in Book Two. Of course, as always, my characters tend to have their own ideas, and the final book often takes an unexpected path—much like a river carving out a new course. But that’s part of the fun! I love getting into my characters’ heads, understanding their motivations, and, most of all, throwing obstacles in their way. After all, a hero’s journey is nothing without persistence, endurance, and sacrifice.

This book will take my characters to new parts of Kashgar that we didn’t explore in Child of the River, so I’m excited to build out more of this medieval world. My goal is to capture enough vivid details so my readers can see it as clearly as I do.

The outlining should be done in about a week—then it’s on to writing! Looking forward to sharing the finished book with you in 2026.