The Steaming Pot - Easy vegetarian recipes from India

Not all experiments pass muster the first time. A few go through rounds of trials before they reach publicly sharable shape. A few are embarrassments best shelved forever (I’m thinking of you, curdled strawberry yogurt). Lachha gobhi paratha, I’m delighted to report, was a stupendous success from the word go.

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I was looking for a chickpea recipe that did not call for onion, tomato, ginger or garlic, and I stumbled upon a Himachali dish called madra which is served during the dham food festival. Madra is a legume and yogurt combination with an array of aromatic spices – just the kind of recipe I wanted. My version is lighter than the traditional one and calls for fewer spices, based primarily on what was available with me – I simply call it “dahi chhole” instead of madra as I have probably strayed too far from the template…

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Chana dal paratha with dahi and achar – nothing else comes close for a filling, comforting Sunday brunch. Try it this weekend!

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Making beetroot raita is like taking a complementary course in color therapy. Boil the beets – witness the transparent water turn a purple-red. Peel, trim, grate – get your fingers prettily tinted. Fold grated beet into plain yogurt – behold swirls of white-pink so vivid, you’d be reminded of rubies and pale silk. This beetroot raita, I promise, will make the staidest meal come alive. (more…)

Stir-fried boiled millets with assorted vegetables, peanuts and seasoning – a healthy one-pot meal that sits just right in the lunchbox. Millet peanut vegetable stir-fry is vegetarian-friendly, gluten-free, and uses no onion or garlic.

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When a friend returned from Austin to Chennai, she brought back for her mother an ornate crockpot. Her mother unsurprisingly did not find much use for the contraption in her home cooking. For a while the crockpot was relegated to the far corner of her storage shelves. Till inspiration struck – and she converted the crockpot into a tulsi planter.

My story is not as drastic as that, but seeing my mother use her paddu maker for cooking littis raised a smile much like my friend’s story did. Paddus are not a staple food for us, so her paddu maker would mostly lie forlorn. One day my mother decided to give the equipment a "litti maker" makeover. The rounded fissures of the paddu griddle work perfectly as receptacles for litti balls. Slow cooking on the fire, with a turn or two in between, gives us littis close to the traditional fire-roasted ones.

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Grape and walnut fried rice – a treat to the senses! Revel in the flavors of tart-sweet grapes, toasted walnuts, caramelized onions studding fried rice.

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