The Steaming Pot - Easy vegetarian recipes from India

Tinda gets its English name from its visual similarity to green apples. A member of the gourd family, tinda has a mild flavor, high water content and lots of vitamins/minerals. The vegetable is ubiquitous in Delhi – at arm’s reach in the local market, cooked every other day in office cafetarias. Not so in Bangalore. Here this gourd graces only in the bigger stores, cellophaned and stocked with imported veggies like yellow peppers and Chinese cabbage.

I didn’t know I’d crave for tinda till it became scarce. As with parval (pointed gourd), my love for this vegetable has been a recent change of heart. Whoever said that absence makes the heart grow fonder knew what he was talking about. 

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Bhindi (okra) with a generous mix of onions and Indian spices – a lovely vegetable dish to go with chapatis.

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What takes time to cook is not necessarily complex. That statement is so true of rajma masala. To the uninitiated, this dish might give the impression that sophisticated culinary jugglery went into creating it. In truth this is one of the simpler gravies you could make in the Indian cuisine.

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What can one do with atta, onion, tomatoes, ginger and a pack of kasoori methi? 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 to the grocer’s and replenish my fridge. Sometimes, necessity and laziness can produce wondrous results :)

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When onion prices skyrocket, as they have in India nowadays, what better than to switch to dishes that don’t use onions at all? Here is the recipe of a potato eggplant bharta I made today, using no onions.

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