Picture a kitchen in ancient Madurai, somewhere around 200 BCE. Steam rises off a stack of small, pleated dumplings — rice flour crimped into a shape like a closed lotus bud, filled with grated coconut and jaggery, waiting to be sold to a street full of hungry pilgrims. That dumpling has a name that hasContinue reading “The Sweet That Outsmarted a God: The 2,000-Year History of the Modak”