The Steaming Pot - Easy vegetarian recipes from India

Chana dal paratha with dahi and achar – nothing else comes close for a filling, comforting Sunday brunch. Try it this weekend!

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Making beetroot raita is like taking a complementary course in color therapy. Boil the beets – witness the transparent water turn a purple-red. Peel, trim, grate – get your fingers prettily tinted. Fold grated beet into plain yogurt – behold swirls of white-pink so vivid, you’d be reminded of rubies and pale silk. This beetroot raita, I promise, will make the staidest meal come alive. (more…)

A simple stir fry of potatoes and cauliflower elevated by the tadka of fenugreek seeds in mustard oil. Aloo gobhi bhujiya pairs well with pooris / parathas and stacks well in the lunchbox.

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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…)

Take the basic semolina pancake recipe up a level: fortify it with carrot and cucumber, flavor its base with a dash of dahi, spice it up with ginger and chilies. Carrot cucumber rava cheela works really well for brunch or in the lunchbox with tomato pickle on the side.

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Home-style aloo tinda ki sabzi, cooked with tomatoes and spices.

If tinda is unfamiliar to you, here’s an intro:

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