5 days ago
Lounge Loves: ‘Asterix and Obelix', a foldover pizza sandwich and more
Earlier in March, I carried my entire Asterix and Obelix collection from my parents' home in Bengal to Mumbai. I wanted to introduce the popular French comic series to my seven-year-old son, who surprisingly got hooked in no time. So you can imagine our excitement when Netflix released the comic adaptation of Asterix and Obelix recently. We binge-watched all five episodes of the The Big Fight series, that go back in time to the beloved Gaulish warrior duo's childhood, including an incident where Obelix accidentally falls into a vat of magic potion and acquires superhuman strength. What got us most excited are some new characters like Apothika, an old friend of the village druid Getafix, and Metadata, the cool rebel girl, who helps Julius Caesar strategise the big fight between the Gauls and the Romans. This one's an absolute riot of fun.
Like most boys his age, eight-and-a-half-year-old Palash Ranjan Sen, aka Poltu, loves reading Phantom comics. But unlike his peers, he has a scientist mother who is headed for an Arctic mission, and an uncle with an odd job—rehoming ghosts ousted by the forces of climate change and urbanisation. Sudeshna Shome Ghosh's delightful middle-grade novel takes you on a night-long taxi ride through the spookiest neighbourhoods of Kolkata. With fun illustrations by Pankaj Saikia, the story will not only resonate with readers around Poltu's age, but also their seniors. Weren't we all eight once, looking for friendly ghosts to spice up our boring lives swamped with school and holiday homework?
I have a WhatsApp group with two friends—each of us in our 30s, navigating very different life stages—united by a love for home improvement finds. I call it calming capitalism. We trade notes on bedsheets, diffusers, label makers, and most recently, sunscreen for the group's only man, who's new to skincare. When I needed a spray bottle that could handle both my plant babies and my unruly curls, I turned to the youngest in the group, our resident make-up artist. She suggested Inovera (Label)'s mist spray bottle, and it's been a quiet joy. My leaves are perked up, and taming my hair feels like less of a chore now. The group chat? Still going strong, fuelled by product recs, tiny upgrades, and the everyday thrill of making life feel a little nicer.
Hipsters everywhere will hate me for saying this: I hate sourdough. Don't mess with sandwich bread, I say. So it was with great suspicion that I tried a 'foldover pizza sandwich' at Breakaway Pizzeria and Café in Panaji last month, and—you know where this is going—I loved it. It's a take on the panuzzo, and has roots in Naples, like the Neapolitan pizza they serve. Breakaway's dough is 70% hydrated, which means there's 700 grams of water for every 1,000g of flour, and fermented for 44 hours. The bread is pulled by hand and baked fresh for every sandwich, which gives every panuzzo that perfectly mild char and the light little pockets that make Neapolitan pizza special. There's the comfort of bread, without it overwhelming the filling itself, whether it's fresh tomatoes and stracciatella with basil pesto, or meatballs with mozzarella.
