Nupur Kittur of One Hot Stove Serves Up Her Three Favorite Blog Posts

Nupur Kittur, 30, got her first taste of food blogging by sending another food blog a recipe and a photo of the finished dish. She admittedly was so excited by seeing her work published, she began her own food blog. From those humble roots, Kittur's blogging now has resulted in hundreds of posts on cooking and living in St. Louis. For this, Kittur is one of our favorite bloggers and is featured in this week's feature story.

Below, Kittur shares her favorite posts from One Hot Stove. (Go to our favorite blogger archive page to see more local bloggers' all-time favorite posts.)

*Meet Kittur in-person for our first-ever RFT blogger happy hour at 5 p.m. tonight at Blueberry Hill on Delmar. (We've conveniently scheduled it at 5 p.m. for your sake: you have a legit reason to cut work early!)*

OK, this was really difficult to do because I have hundreds of posts and no longer remember what I wrote in most of them, ha ha.

But here goes:

1.
http://onehotstove.blogspot.com/2005/04/bombay-street-food-pav-bhaji.html
I wrote this post within the first few weeks of starting my blog, and it has been far and away the most popular post on my blog for all these years. The reason I love this post is because it captures the desperation of expatriates, when you really really want to taste something (a particular street food from Mumbai in this case) that can only be found 8000 miles away. It also captures my joy at finding a way to replicate this taste at home by wheedling a recipe from an aunt and going on to share it on the www. This one recipe has made a lot of people happy.
A reader told me that this recipe is linked on the Wikipedia pav bhaji page- my 15 nanoseconds of fame.

2. This is a toss up between two posts; do you allow cheating? If not, choose either one of these. Both show pictures from my hometown in India.
http://onehotstove.blogspot.com/2006/06/weekend-herb-blogging-shopping-local.html
India has such a vibrant food culture. Some of the most colorful places in India are the vegetable markets that are brimming with fresh, local produce. It took a foreigner (a Polish friend of mine) to show me the beauty of these markets that I take for granted. I used his pictures and wrote this photo essay. I often struggle with writer's block when I sit down to write a post. What makes this post special is that I looked at the pictures and the words came gushing from my heart.
http://onehotstove.blogspot.com/2009/05/mango-harvest.html
I love this post because it captures scenes that get replicated in homes all over India in the summer months. These scenes are "my" India as opposed to the stereotyped images of the Taj Mahal and elephants and snake charmers. This post elicited all strong feelings of nostalgia and longing from my readers who remember their own childhoods in India.

3.
http://onehotstove.blogspot.com/2010/02/making-yogurt-at-home.html
I love this post because it is an example of the two-way conversations that happen on my blog. I am lucky to have really intelligent readers who jump in with great comments and advice. A simple thing like making yogurt from scratch has so much art and science behind it, as the comments from the readers show.