March 14, 2021

Gifts from Pushpir in India đź’›

“I have okra. What do I make?”

That was a text I sent to Pushpir back in 2015. He ran my favorite Indian restaurant (Guru the Caterer, still in operation today but under different management). We got to know one another and I would shoot him text messages when I had an ingredient so that he could guide me (also via text message) through an Indian dish using that item.

My family has a tradition of scratch-cooking Indian food once a week at our house, and it’s so, so delicious thanks to Pushpir.

And of course he helped us design one of our most successful sandwiches of all time, The Pushpir (which we just bid farewell to for the season). Boston lost Pushpir when he moved to India for new food journeys. Earlier this winter, he reached out and told me he was in town. We met up, COVID-style, outside and masked. It was so good to see him. 

We’re going to include a gift from Pushpir in our boxes next week!!! 

Pushpir has founded a company selling spices, pickles, chutneys, and more, and we can’t wait to share some of his products with you all. 

The first 250 meal boxes for 2- or 4-people ordered for Thursday 3/18 only will get a jar of Golden Milk Masala from Pushpir’s new company, Depth ‘N’ Green.

This spice blend is full of good things – stone-ground turmeric, cardamom, cinnamon, black pepper, star anise, dry ginger, nutmeg, cloves (and love). Shipped to us (with more than a bit of effort on the part of Pushpir, Jane, the United States, and India) straight from Mysore!

If you order for Thursday, here’s how Pushpir recommends making Golden Milk, either hot or cold.

Mix 1 teaspoon of the masala with milk of your choice in a small saucepan or pot and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat and let it simmer for about 8 to 10 minutes until fragrant and flavorful. Strain the drink through a fine strainer into mugs. Add honey or maple syrup to sweeten it or enjoy it without. For cold golden milk latte let the above mix cool down and blend it with ice and enjoy. Golden milk can be made in advance and stored in your refrigerator for up to five days. Simply reheat it before drinking or blend with ice for a cold golden latte. Garnish with crushed pistachio and almonds.

And if you (or a friend) doesn’t need a meal box on Thursday, but still wants to explore Pushpir’s creations, you can purchase jars of the Golden Milk Masala along with lots of other goodies at Depth ‘N’ Green.

PS: To clarify what we mean by 2- or 4-person meal box, the following boxes are eligible for the gift if ordered for delivery of pickup on 3/18: Maple Celebration Box, Starter Box, Winter Seasonal Box, Breakfast Box, Classics Box, Mediterranean Box, Post-Meat Box, Vegan Box, and Gluten-Free Box. We have a limited amount of gifts, and only first 250 eligible boxes ordered will receive.

Recent Posts

September 26, 2023
Come by tomorrow (9/27) for the return of the Japanese Sweet Potato Sandwich! What’s inside? Shoyu mayo, roasted-then-fried sweet potatoes, cabbage-green-onion-slaw, and tempura-fried sesame seeds that resemble a many-eyed sea monster. It’s sweet, it’s funky, it’s savory, it’s only here this time of year. Michelle was doing some research and she located the…
September 18, 2023
One of the dishes in our upcoming Apple Box is wobbly, sweet, eat-with-a-spoon, kind of ugly, and so yummy. It’s Baked Apples. We used to make them every morning at the original Harvard Square restaurant. It would fill Holyoke Street with the smell of brown sugar and cinnamon and the first apples of fall. Turns out their history in Harvard Square is even older than our restaurant – our favorite former grocery store owner Tony Russo remembered going to diners in Harvard Square for them when he was a kid. Along with everything you need to make baked apples, the Apple Box has my favorite…
September 12, 2023
If you’ve seen a Clover truck out of the corner of your eye, your eyes are not deceiving you. We’ve been popping up at select events around the city. This photo is of an event at a farm, The Food Project in Lincoln. We served cruditĂ©s with fancy hummus, and French fries with rosemary. There was a fair amount of excitement, involving Joe and Mary from Clover teaming up with a farmer to help un-stuck the truck from some mud. If you want the Clover truck to pull up at your event, email us at catering@cloverfoodlab.com. And if you’re a Clover staff member reading and want to inject a dose of excitement and fresh air into your day, get in touch about working a truck event or two!
September 6, 2023
Sara (kitchen) here. Ok, we haven’t started offering ice cream at the restaurants but there IS a way to get ice cream from Clover in your own kitchen. If you head to the Meal Box area of our app before Thursday at 5pm, you can order a No-Churn Corn Ice Cream Kit. I’ve never had too much of a sweet tooth, but I’ve always had a soft spot for ice cream. I’ve been making a lot of it at home this summer, and I always bring some in for the Clover team. When we were thinking about a corn box, I couldn’t stop thinking about corn ice cream.
September 1, 2023
Clover folks sure like the yellow stuff: Our Corn Box sold out in just 36 hours! Wow. If you’re still hankering for something to husk, fear not: we just opened up a 2nd delivery date: Sat, 9/9. If you haven’t tried one of these yet, the Corn Box is the latest in our home delivery meal box series spotlighting the best of seasonal produce. We work with our network of New England farms to pinpoint exactly the right weekend to deliver veggies at their freshest, and we do most of the prep for you…
August 28, 2023
Clover is now on DoorDash and Uber Eats. Pre-pandemic we were really wary of these platforms – they take big fees from restaurants and can cause a lot of harm to smaller operators, and we were worried about people first encountering us on a third party platform, rather than in-person (we love to talk to you!) But then we talked to a few industry friends and we found out…
August 24, 2023
We’ve been fielding so many sweet emails and DMs asking if the Zucchini is back. And finally we can say it is! This sandwich is one of my favorites we do all year. There’s a thick slice of glazed tofu from Heiwa in Maine. Basil mayo (Red Fire Farm basil). Fresh raw zucchini we cut into half-moons. Snappingly fresh corn (right now it’s coming from Verrill Farm). And shiso which is a Japanese herb that tastes like a cross between mint and basil, with slight licorice-y notes. It’s sweet/salty/fresh and (I think) super addictive.
August 24, 2023
Our Clover restaurant at Copley Square, the one we call CloverBBY (Back Bay) is closing immediately. I’m pretty sad and really shook up, and just bummed. This is the second Clover we’ve ever closed, the first was in Brookline Village. That one was peaceful. This one is violent and really stressful. We signed the lease for CloverBBY in 2019, taking over from a failed outpost of Honeygrow. The space was newly renovated, our neighbor Dig Inn was doing $5m a year in sales (or so we’d been told) and we all expected this to rocket to be our busiest, highest volume restaurant ever…
August 13, 2023
Fresh tomatoes, baked tomatoes, tomato jam, tomato butter, tomato soup. What is your favorite way to eat tomatoes? We’ve been playing with the idea of doing meal boxes dedicated to ONE seasonal veggie/fruit – but with tons of different recipes you can make at home. Now that tomatoes are coming in from Red Fire and Next Barn Over, we’ve dreamed up our first annual Tomato Box.
August 1, 2023
August 15th is Julia Child’s Birthday, and the Clover kitchen crew decided there was no more fitting way to honor our former neighbor than with a French-inflected meal box packed with Julia-inspired fare.. Our neighbor? Yes! Julia lived in Cambridge about one mile down the road from CloverHUB and shot her famous TV shows right from the kitchen of her house—but don’t try to pop in now: her kitchen was disassembled piece by piece and shipped off to the Smithsonian. Inside the Julia Child’s Birthday Box you’ll get…
July 31, 2023
Bowls are now in-testing at two locations: LMA (360 Longwood Ave) and NTV (825 Washington in Newtonville). This is a big change – requiring lots of new containers, prep lists, training. We’ve been seeing people coming in over and over to eat them. We’ve been learning a lot from your feedback and have already made tweaks (more farro in the Romesco Bowl, the addition of a Beet Poke Bowl). Stop in and let us know what you think of these when you try them.
July 17, 2023
In all my years of camping, my favorite campsite was located in a field of blueberries. It wasn’t near a farm or anything, just a field of wild blueberries. With berries available year round at the grocery store, sometimes you can forget that they have a season and it’s right now! Tart, sweet, creamy. Yay Blueberries! We’ve been working on this idea to make…