Those beautiful pale green berries on the vegetable vendor’s cart looked so bewitching, I had to pick them up. I used them in this delicious amla dal (gooseberry dal) and loved the result, I can heartily recommend the recipe to you.
Garlic
How to Make Pasta Sauce with Tomatoes
This post is dedicated to all those who believe their culinary range is limited to cooking instant noodles and heating ready-made food, for whom pasta sauce means a pricey jar of red substance bought from the supermarket.
Please. Don’t let those packaged pasta sauce bottles burn a hole in your pocket and inject a million preservatives into your system. Making homemade tomato sauce for pasta is the easiest thing in the world. At least, if you go by this recipe I’m going to share with you.
Potatoes in Mustard Sauce
A traditional recipe from Bihar/Bengal that revels in the heady potency of mustard. If you like the sharpness of mustard and mustard oil, you are in for a treat with sarson wale aloo (potatoes in mustard sauce).
Dry Spinach Moong Dal
Moong dal and spinach complement each other perfectly. One comes packed with protein, the other boasts of high vitamin-mineral content; one is known for its digestive ease, the other for its roughage. And the colors – the pale yellow of moong playing off the rich green of spinach – are an added invitation to dig into this delicately flavored sautéed spinach moong dal.
Kala Chana (Black Chickpea) with Poppy Seeds and Mint
Surplus coaxes us towards invention as much as scarcity. I hate to throw food items away and equally hate to have them beyond their "best before" dates. So I’m using up my pack of poppy seeds, that’s dangerously close to expiry, in varied ways Ditto for my bunch of fresh mint leaves. I used some in pudina chutney last night when the mint was freshly plucked – the rest went into this kala chana recipe.
How awesome it is when untried combinations of flavors turn out well.
Bhindi Do Pyaza: Okra, and Twice as Much of Onions!
Bhindi (okra) with a generous mix of onions and Indian spices – bhindi do pyaza (literally: okra with twice the amount of onions) is a lovely vegetable dish to go with chapatis.