The Steaming Pot - Easy vegetarian recipes from India

It is one thing to know how to cook individual Indian dishes, quite another to combine the dishes harmoniously into an appetizing meal. Rajma masala and chhole masala are fantastic house party food, but would you serve them together? Not if you have a modest number of items on the menu. You love pooris as much as you love kadhi, but you would pair them with each other? Not if you want to kill the essence of both.

There are flavors that cohere and flavors that clash. You wouldn’t put multiple items of the same genre – such as gourds or dals – in the same meal. Pooris would possibly go with potato curry, kadhi would most definitely get served with plain rice.

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Fresh fenugreek and onion fritters dunked in a yogurt-based gravy [my mouth is watering as I type this!] – that’s methi pakora kadhi. For those of you new to Indian cooking – kadhi is a sour gravy traditionally made with lightly spiced yogurt. Different regions of India have distinct styles to making kadhi. In North India, kadhi is served with fritters (pakoras) in it. In Karnataka, a similar dish majjige huli is popular – this is a lighter version with boiled vegetables in place of pakoras. In Gujarat, kadhi is sweetened with jaggery. And you wouldn’t typically add onions to kadhi in Bihar – my mom certainly wouldn’t.

This recipe is closest to the style of Punjabi kadhi.

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Tinda gets its English name from its visual similarity to green apples. A member of the gourd family, tinda has a mild flavor, high water content and lots of vitamins/minerals. The vegetable is ubiquitous in Delhi – at arm’s reach in the local market, cooked every other day in office cafetarias. Not so in Bangalore. Here this gourd graces only the bigger stores, cellophane-wrapped and stocked with imported veggies like yellow peppers and Chinese cabbage.

I didn’t realize I’d crave for tinda till it became scarce. As with parval (pointed gourd), my love for this vegetable has been a recent change of heart. Whoever said that absence makes the heart grow fonder knew what he was talking about. 

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This zucchini recipe is a savior on busy workdays when there’s no time to craft an elaborate meal. Cooking with zucchini takes no effort at all – it’s easy to chop (compare it to its cousin the ridge gourd – all that peeling!) and quick to cook. Served on the side with hot chapatis, easy cheesy zucchini makes for a filling and comforting vegetarian meal.

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Those beautiful pale green berries on the vegetable vendor’s cart looked so bewitching, I had to pick them up. I used them in this delicious amla dal (gooseberry dal) and loved the result, I can heartily recommend the recipe to you.

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Poppy seeds are a relatively new addition to my pantry and I keep a lookout for ways to expand my repertoire with them. I usually turn to Bengali cuisine for inspiration with this spice – aloo posto is a constant favorite. In a net search for poppy seed recipes, Sailu’s recipe for baby eggplant in an Andhra-style poppy seed gravy caught my attention: the sweet notes of jaggery and the tang of tamarind sounded like delightful additions to the base of poppy seed paste.

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I often do a dry stir fry of cabbage, peas and onions with Indian spices, to accompany plain parathas in my office lunch box. This time I looked towards pan-Asian cuisine for inspiration, putting in a honey soy dressing in place of cumin and coriander.

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