The Steaming Pot - Easy vegetarian recipes from India

While surfing Afghani food channels, I paused when I saw this layered, brilliantly colored thumbnail: “kaddu borani“, said its label. I hit play and by the end of it, had my mouth salivating and my heart saluting the beauty of this dish.

Kaddu borani takes a set of independently prepared ingredients (pumpkin + tomato sauce + yogurt sauce) and meshes them into something so exquisite, the end product is nothing short of a work of art.

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Do you believe that okra should never be cooked moist? This okra and baby potato stew will make you re-evaluate that belief! When simmered in a flavorful tomato curry, okra and potatoes get infused with a delicious tang and, thanks to the acidity of the tomatoes, none of the okra slime.

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Butter garlic green beans – a quick and easy side dish to go with your meals. Here’s a step by step recipe with pictures.

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Tender broad beans / fava beans (sem in Hindi) are cooked with an unusually colored, delicious black sesame sauce in this recipe. The dark, nutty flavor of the sauce brings out the earthiness of the broad beans.

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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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It’s pumpkin season! Time to bring out all the pumpkin recipes for your meals. Today’s main course – pumpkin za’atar with butter garlic sauce – came about by sheer serendipity. I had a pumpkin, I had some za’atar, and I realize this is starting to sound like PPAP so I will pause here to tackle first things first: “What’s za’atar?”

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Jhatpat aloo dry sabzi with lime and spices – a side dish that can be put together in just a few minutes if you have boiled potatoes on hand. The dish gets its distinctive flavor from a homemade spice blend, which you can make ahead and store for use over time.

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