The Steaming Pot - Easy vegetarian recipes from India

Bitter gourd onion fry – a great way to eat bitter gourd if you aren’t a fan of its taste. Combining it with onions is one of the most effective ways of reducing the bitterness of bitter gourd.

Well, this recipe is also a side effect of onion prices diving down this season – my no-onion spree is on a break, my kitchen is stacked with onions and I am adding the bulb copiously to any vegetable dish I make nowadays.

On to the recipe of bitter gourd onion fry…

(more…)

Other than Indian dishes using spinach (spinach toor dal, aloo palak, palak paneer), I love to cook pasta with spinach as its prime ingredient. Here’s a simple spinach cheese pasta recipe.

(more…)

Bitter gourd (karela in Hindi) is an acquired taste perhaps – most people don’t relish its bitterness. One friend famously likes bitter gourd only in the form of bharwa karela (stuffed bitter gourd): she eats the filling and discards the shell.

I have never disliked bitter gourd; rarely will I put it through pre-cooking treatment to reduce its bitterness. Most of these steps make the karela lose not just bitterness but also nutrients. Still, if you must, here are a few tips to reduce the bitterness of bitter gourd:

(more…)

Chura bhuja mattar – popular snack from Bihar that pits the crunch of roasted chura against the tender butteriness of cooked peas (mattar), to fantastic effect.

What is chura, did you ask? Chura is the Bihari word for flattened rice, called chiwra elsewhere in north India. The better-known way of preparing chiwra is in its moistened form, as poha. Chura bhuja, in contrast, works on chiwra crisp and dry.

(more…)

Have you had those triangle-shaped parathas with layers inside them and wondered how they got made? Wonder no more: in this post, I’ll show you how to make triangular parathas with step-by-step pictures.

The word "paratha" comes from the words parat (layer) and atta (flour). So parathas are literally layers of cooked flour.

(more…)

On regular days my simple yellow dal has a spicier accompaniment. On other days, the accompaniment is plain aloo-pyaz fry while the dal is spruced up. Here is one way I make my dal interesting with a green addition: toor dal tadka with spinach.

(more…)

I’m on a run of no onion recipes. This is another such. Masala bhindi (okra) that uses dry spices like cumin and coriander only – no onions, no garlic, no tomatoes.

(more…)