Pihu Jain

January 23, 2025

Everything but the kitchen sink sandwich recipe

By Pihu Jain

This sandwich certainly packs a powerful, flavorful punch and is sure to fill your belly for hours on end.

January 20, 2025

New year, new pasta salad

By Pihu Jain

  As the new year begins, I find myself looking back on my food favorites of 2024. The late-night kimchi fried rice and grilled cheeses were up there, but it was the truckloads of pasta that sustained me through mos...

January 16, 2025

Super Antioxidant Tea Recipe

By Pihu Jain

This recipe is highly colorful, refreshing and energizing early in the morning, with cooling effects that are much to be desired as the weather (hopefully) starts to get warmer.

November 18, 2024

Spice up your life with these fiery-peanut noodles

By Pihu Jain

Everyone has a vice that gets them through the winter months, whether that be pumpkin spice lattes, chai, a favorite scarf or a partridge in a pear tree, you know the stuff. For me, I especially lean into the spice facto...

November 7, 2024

Holiday cheer salad: a recipe to remember

By Pihu Jain

I don’t know about you, but the moment the clock strikes midnight on Nov. 1, it’s “White Christmas” and hot cocoa all the way until Jan. 1 (honestly, most years I even start in August, but that can be our secret)...

October 10, 2024

Your new favorite fall drink: Café de Olla

By Pihu Jain

The weather recently in Isla Vista has been the harbinger of spooky season: foggy, eerie, the windshields misted with cold, gray air that blankets all, every corner dark and menacing, always looking over your shoulder. A...

July 18, 2024

Strawberry Avocado Toast: A Summer Delight

By Pihu Jain

  Whenever I wake to the sweet smell of coffee and a ruckus in the kitchen, it only means one thing: dad is cooking. My father has a flair for the dramatic. Though he is a quiet man, he certainly makes his presence ...

May 23, 2024

California Strawberry Festival

By Pihu Jain

This past weekend, I had the pleasure of attending the California Strawberry Festival, located in the Ventura County Fairgrounds not more than 45 minutes from UCSB. The festival’s roots can be traced back to 1983, when...

May 9, 2024

OTM presents: a collection of family recipes for Mother’s Day

By Abigail Monti, Urmi Mandal, Nina Timofeyeva, Pihu Jain

In preparation for Mother’s Day — coming up on Sunday, May 12 — On the Menu writers came together to compile a list of our favorite family recipes.

May 2, 2024

Nimbu pani, for a simply refreshing time

By Pihu Jain

Something deep within my memory was unlocked after months of dormancy as I sipped on nimbu pani (which translates to “lime water” and is the Indian version of limeade) at the Apna Indian Kitchen restaurant in downtow...

April 18, 2024

Colorful and carefree: a recipe for chuski and a smile

By Pihu Jain

Chuski (or gola, depending on what part of India you’re from), is something akin to shaved ice. It reminds me of the summers of my youth, one hand in my nana’s, the other sticky with sweet syrup and sweat.

February 15, 2024

Bananas today, gone tomorrow?

By Pihu Jain

Layers. Multiple of them can be found in onions, people, paint on walls … too complicated, a lot to reveal, often deceptive once you chip away at them. But you know what is almost exactly what it is within as it is...

October 26, 2023

Bowltober: Dank Bowl Kitchen offers discount to celebrate 10th Anniversary

By Pihu Jain

In a clever celebratory and promotional scheme, Dank Bowl Kitchen released a $10 deal for all bowls in the month of October, also known as Bowltober, to celebrate its 10-year anniversary. 

October 12, 2023

Spice Up Your Life with these Red Chili Fries!

By Pihu Jain

My favorite comfort dish, weaponized by my mother to win my affection every chance she gets, are red chili fries.

August 24, 2023

Ranking UCSB’s most vegetarian-friendly dining halls

By Pihu Jain

Pihu Jain reflects on her freshman dining hall experiences in an effort to determine which UCSB dining hall is the best for vegetarians.

May 11, 2023

Seaweed & Sriracha rice: In leftovers we trust

By Pihu Jain

Below is the curated, latest version of my favorite, and only, recipe I’ve ever concocted.