The Steaming Pot - Easy vegetarian recipes from India

Capsicum and cherry tomatoes are tailor-made for worknight meals, with simple chopping needs and small cooking times. Combine with some pre-cooked tomato masala and you have a capsicum cherry tomato curry that looks so regal, it’s hard to believe how easy it was to create.

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Seeing that a nutty ingredient does a great job of taming the bitter notes of other ingredients (think curry leaf peanut chutney or sesame fenugreek chutney), I dared to make a rice dish seeped in curry leaf, with a load of cashews for good effect. And I loved the result.

Here’s my curry leaf pulao recipe – for those who share taste buds similar to mine! How many of you?

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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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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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One of the nicest ways of using fresh paneer (cottage cheese) is in a toasted sandwich. If you have an electric sandwich toaster, that would come in handy at breakfast time. If no toaster around, no worries – you could grill your paneer sandwich or cook it in a non-stick pan on the stove top.

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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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