The Steaming Pot - Easy vegetarian recipes from India

A curry with easy-to-chop, quick-to-cook veggies – mushrooms, spring onions and tomatoes – and a dash of Italian spices, for a weekday dinner.

Mushroom spring onion curry doesn’t require much watching over while its cooking and is ready in the time you make half a dozen chapatis. Just what you want on a day when you don’t have much time to spare for the kitchen.

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Paneer bread roll, pan-fried and served with red chili sauce. While mom made these, I did nothing this morning except click pictures and eat :-)

Bread rolls are generally deep-fried; this shallow-fried version is lighter and saves on the oil.

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Kathal ki sabzi (raw jackfruit curry) is an Indian vegetarian delicacy cooked especially around the month of Holi, when jackfruit is in season in north India.

Newbie cooks, be warned – you are up for a challenge if want to make kathal ki sabzi. The prickly, tough-skinned jackfruit requires skill to peel and cut, and then takes ages of cooking time. Part of the hurdle is handled these days – supermarkets stock packs of peeled and chopped jackfruit, ready to cook. Go right ahead and pick up one of these packs if you can. If not, I’ll point you to the always-awesome Rak’s Kitchen for illustrated steps to peel a jackfruit.

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A fantastic potato curry from my mother’s kitchen, that we love to have with pooris and dahi vada on the day of Holi. I hope you like this one as much as I do.

Wish you a happy Holi!

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Sooji or semolina, as Wikipedia tells us, is

the coarse, purified wheat middlings of durum wheat used in making pasta, breakfast cereals, puddings, and couscous.

That description covers wide ground, taking in its span popular Indian dishes like  halwa and upma – versions of pudding/breakfast cereal made of semolina.

Cooking sooji as a cheela (pancake) is a relatively unusual way of using the flour, but once you try it, you’ll definitely want to do frequent repeats.

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A vitamin-filled start to the day with carrot poha: flattened rice cooked crisp with grated carrot and pepper.

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With tomatoes at throwaway prices in these parts nowadays, who wouldn’t be tempted to buy the red juicy vegetable (fruit?) by the sackful? I gave in to the lure and have been happily cooking tomato-based stuff since – pasta in tomato sauce one day, potatoes in tomato gravy the next.

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