The Steaming Pot - Easy vegetarian recipes from India

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.

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The very versatile spinach goes into this very green one-pot rice meal, making it a wholesome Sunday lunch option.

I normally keep coriander pesto handy in the fridge for a quick addition to salads or sandwich spread. Putting some pesto into spinach rice, along with the garnish of fried cashew nuts, worked wonders with the otherwise simple meal.

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A one-dish rich rice meal bulging with flavors -whole garam masala, the heat and crunch of peppercorns, fried onions and cashew nuts, peas and ghee. On a Sunday afternoon at home, what more could I ask for?

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Leftover boiled rice gives us plenty of opportunity for reshaping into new avatars, doesn’t it? I had a tempting pack of button mushrooms with me and used it for this mushroom fried rice tonight.

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Khichdi isn’t exactly the height of culinary sophistication – but sometimes we don’t want culinary sophistication. Hands up all men and women living away from family who, after a series of spice-laden oily meals outdoors or countless packets of instant noodles, crave for simple home-cooked khichdi?

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Tempering with cumin  seeds – a quick way to embellish your plain boiled rice.

You Need:

• Rice – 2 cups, boiled and cooled
• Ghee – 2 teaspoons
• Cumin seeds – 2 teaspoons
• Salt – a pinch
• Black pepper corns – a few (optional)

How To:

Heat the ghee in a non-stick pan. Add the cumin seeds and pepper corns.

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A plus of cooking only for yourself is the chance it gives you for daring experimentation. Do whatever. Relish it if it turns out brilliant, commit it to memory (and blog) for treating others in future. Shrug it off if it does not; it’s only one that suffered through it.

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