The Steaming Pot - Easy vegetarian recipes from India

Today’s post is about a much-loved breakfast dish in India – besan ka cheela. For the uninitiated, besan is flour made from Bengal gram (chana dal), used in Indian cuisine in a variety of dishes such as kadhi, jhunka and pakoras.

In cheela, batter is made out of besan and other ingredients, shallow-fried like pancakes on an skillet/tava and served hot.

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In the post on coriander parsley pesto, I had promised to share recipe ideas using pesto.

And so, here I am, delivering on that promise.

Three recipe ideas using pesto as key ingredient: mushroom and cherry tomato sauté with pesto, spaghetti with pesto, pesto on toast.

1. Mushroom and Cherry Tomato Saute with Pesto

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A chunky, nutty tomato ginger chutney with a sprinkling of roasted peanuts. Like the sound of it?

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Of all the types of dals, split toor dal (also called arhar dal) is the one I cook most often. I don’t always put a tadka with it, sometimes just plain boiled dal with salt and a few drops of lime juice tastes great when the rest of the dishes on my place are spicy. On other "tadka" days, tomato toor dal is one of my most-loved ways of having toor dal.

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When you want a simple tasty vegetable curry to be ready without much effort, this stew of bottle gourd, potatoes and tomatoes is your answer. Use a pressure-cooker to make lauki aloo and you save a lot on time too.

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I love grilled sandwiches. They have become something of a staple for my weekend breakfast. The sandwich filling varies depending on my mood and the contents of my fridge/pantry – mashed potatoes, paneer slices, the vegetable side-dish from last night’s dinner. This tomato baby corn filling, spiked with Italian spices, is one of my reigning favorites.

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What can one do with wheat flour, onion and tomatoes? Make stuffed parathas of course. This filling came to be simply because I was out of other vegetables and it was raining too heavily for me to venture out and restock. Sometimes, necessity and laziness can produce wondrous results. Onion tomato parathas are proof!

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