The Steaming Pot - Easy vegetarian recipes from India

Each kitchen stint with the chayote teaches me something new. When I began cooking with this gourd, peeling it was hard – till I learnt the techniques of making triangular notches around its folds and boiling it before peeling. Soon I discovered a different variety of the chayote: the “Ooty chow chow”, which has a smooth exterior that demands no fiddling with folds at all.

So I switched loyalties to the Ooty chow chow, as my observant regulars would have noticed in the post on chayote dal.

While cutting raw veggies and fruits, I sometimes pop a few chopped pieces into my mouth. A reflex action if you will, this usually leads me to grimace and move on – but when I did this with the Ooty chow chow I stopped in my tracks. This vegetable didn’t just look like a pear, it tasted startlingly like one. Do I even need to cook this, I wondered. (more…)

Pudina rice – fragrant basmati with the freshness of mint leaves, the zing of ginger and lime, and nutty cashew goodness to round it all off.

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No fuss no spill – coconut rice is great in the lunchbox. Keep boiled and cooled rice handy to put this together easily on time-pressed mornings. Add a side of crispy spiced plantain or quick potato dry sabzi for some kick.

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Dalia (broken wheat) porridge is a favored breakfast food in many Indian homes. The grain is made by milling raw wheat grains; it’s especially nutritious as it is unrefined. Dalia is a great source of vitamins, minerals, dietary fibre – all that at an affordable price.

There’s got to be a catch, you think? You are right.

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Nutty, sweet flavors complement beans very well – I had taken to this idea when I first made string beans with peanuts and jaggery. This time I had green beans (French beans) on hand, which meant a milder flavor and more crunch. This felt like a good opportunity to up the experimental quotient on "nutty, sweet flavors".

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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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