The Steaming Pot - Easy vegetarian recipes from India

Have boiled rice in your fridge ? Congratulations – you can have your dinner ready in seven minutes flat, with this lemon rice recipe. Tangy, tasty, superquick – it’s a blessing on days when there is just no time to cook.

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"Cannot handle the pungency of radish" – is that your rationale for staying away from radish-based curries? I know how you feel. Once upon a time, I was you. Till I discovered tricks to tame the mighty mooli. May I gently recommend to you my mooli fry recipe. With steps calculated to reduce the sharpness of radish, mooli fry presents to you this root veggie in its mildest form.

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A snack or side dish made of chana dal (Bengal gram) that capitalizes on this dal’s nutty taste. Sookhi chana dal needs very few ingredients and is easy enough to be put together by a kitchen newbie. Those who rely on instant noodles or packaged bhujiya for snack-time with the excuse "I don’t know how to cook" – prepare to shed that line!

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You can play "guess the secret ingredient" with this mooli chutney (white radish chutney) recipe. When cooked and blended with other ingredients, white radish sheds its sharp sting, taking on a gentle pungency instead. The end result is an exotically flavorful chutney.

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Chana dal has a rich texture and a hint of sweetness in its taste when compared to other yellow dals such as moong or toor. These qualities make chana dal the perfect pairing choice with green leafy vegetables, especially greens that lean towards bitter.  For those who would not touch fenugreek chutney or chaulai saag, a smart alternate to get their dose of greens is by "hiding" the leaves in chana dal.

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Chana dal (Bengal gram lentils) in a gloriously spiced curry, the kind one describes with epithets like "meal fit for a king".

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Confession time: I had to Google "nenua in English" for this post. I learnt that the vegetable is called sponge gourd: the name comes from the fact that the fibrous core of the gourd is dried and used as a sponge/loofah. Not surprisingly, the Latin name of sponge gourd is Luffa cylindra.

Be that as it may, it feels stilted to call the very Bihari nenua "sponge gourd" especially since I’m blogging about a very Bihari recipe. I’ll continue calling it nenua in this post.

Gourds pair well with dal, as in the lovely ridge gourd moong dal. Nenua chana is another case in point. This is a very uncomplicated recipe with few ingredients, the perfect kind for a new cook to test their skills on.

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