The Steaming Pot - Easy vegetarian recipes from India

In my pre-teen years, food mentions in books would send my senses into overdrive visualizing them. The less familiar the food, the more vivid the imagined details. "Hot buttered scones", said Enid Blyton, and I pictured mildly sweet nimki-like snack twisted into conical shape, dripping with melted butter. "Lemonade" to my mind was a cross between nimbu pani and Limca. "Red radishes" were slender, graceful and blood red, more alluring than the humble white we had access to.

Reading Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel The Namesake, I realised I am not much changed today. Ashima makes "thick channa dal with swollen brown raisins" for her party. What can that be like?  Now I don’t just imagine, I cook my interpretation of it :)

(more…)

An exotic rice kheer (pudding) that gets its sweetness entirely from jaggery and dried figs. A hint of saffron that elevates it to greater heights.

A dessert fit for royalty with the best kind of calories you can hope to get from such indulgence. Jaggery may come from the same source as white sugar – sugarcane juice – but it’s miles ahead in terms of nutrition. The process of refining strips white sugar of sugarcane’s mineral contents, while the simpler method of jaggery-making retains them.

(more…)

Who says the tastier the dish, the more sinful it is? Coconut date balls are the perfect rebuttal to that axiom.

Learn how to make this delectable sweet  packed with nutrition, with no added oils, no processed sugars. And vegan to boot.

(more…)

Carrot onion raita (yogurt dip) – this cool, tangy accompaniment with its hint of sweetness, give the perfect balance to spicy Indian gravies.

(more…)