The Steaming Pot - Easy vegetarian recipes from India

While wolfing down gobi manchurian, I wondered what to do next with my pack of wolfberries. That’s when sudden inspiration struck me. Allow me to present goji berry dal tadka, a happy marriage of Indian dal tadka with the Chinese “superfruit” goji.

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Grated white radish seasoned and stuffed in flat-bread, pan fried with ghee. Mooli paratha is a delicious wholesome meal, perfect for brunch.

There are two schools of thought on how the filling for mooli paratha should be prepared: the first camp sautés the grated radish before using it for stuffing, the second camp keeps it raw. This recipe gives you my preferred method – the raw.

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Moong dal pairs well with gourds: my much-clicked recipe of ridge gourd moong dal is ample proof of that. This recipe combines moong dal with another similar gourd – the zucchini – with some green leafy goodness added to the mix. It’s homey, light and lemony, the kind that inspires coinages such as “comfort food”.
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The southern states of India excel in the art of making various types of podi: literally ‘powder’, the word is used to describe ground dry spice blends. One really smart use of podi is as a ready-to-eat mix for plain boiled rice. Within seconds, a swirl of podi transforms plain boiled rice  into a fancy one-pot meal. The traditional podis I’m familiar with use a legume such as toor dal or chana dal as the base; this very simple 3-ingredient podi uses peanuts instead.  On days when there’s no time to cook a set meal of rice-dal-curry, this podi-based peanut sesame rice is a lifesaver.

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With garlic, curry leaves and ghee for company, dal with raw mango is like heaven in a bowl. What’s more, it doesn’t take much to give your workaday yellow dal this exotic tangy twist. Let me show you how.

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A nutritious one-pot meal in which fenugreek leaves, peanuts and ghee add their charm to rice. Methi moongphali chawal is just the answer for you if you *want* to consume fenugreek for its health-giving properties but find its – shall we say, potent – taste unpalatable.

This recipe is really quick to put together if you have the boiled ingredients and the spice base – methi chutney – ready beforehand. Do as I do – make a big batch of methi chutney, use it as side dish on Day 1 and in fenugreek peanut rice on Day 2. Ek panth do kaaj.

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I know some who will not touch beetroot come what may. And so if you must feed them this fantastic food, you have to innovate. Hide it in ways that tame its taste. I present to you the gloriously colorful beetroot paratha, which has many a hater turn into a beetroot buff.

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