The Steaming Pot - Easy vegetarian recipes from India

It is one thing to know how to cook individual Indian dishes, quite another to combine the dishes harmoniously into an appetizing meal. Rajma masala and chhole masala are fantastic house party food, but would you serve them together? Not if you have a modest number of items on the menu. You love pooris as much as you love kadhi, but you would pair them with each other? Not if you want to kill the essence of both.

There are flavors that cohere and flavors that clash. You wouldn’t put multiple items of the same genre – such as gourds or dals – in the same meal. Pooris would possibly go with potato curry, kadhi would most definitely get served with plain rice.

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Fresh fenugreek and onion fritters dunked in a yogurt-based gravy [my mouth is watering as I type this!] – that’s methi pakora kadhi. For those of you new to Indian cooking – kadhi is a sour gravy traditionally made with lightly spiced yogurt. Different regions of India have distinct styles to making kadhi. In North India, kadhi is served with fritters (pakoras) in it. In Karnataka, a similar dish majjige huli is popular – this is a lighter version with boiled vegetables in place of pakoras. In Gujarat, kadhi is sweetened with jaggery. And you wouldn’t typically add onions to kadhi in Bihar – my mom certainly wouldn’t.

This recipe is closest to the style of Punjabi kadhi.

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15th August is round the corner. To celebrate India’s Independence day, let the tricolor inspire our food. Here’s an idea in saffron, white and green – a patriotic raita.

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I cook with spinach quite a lot – in curries, as a base for green pasta sauce, in spinach dal and spinach rice. Here is yet another use of this lovely green vegetable. Spinach parathas or palak parathas.

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Do you realize that if you stack round parathas in a square lunchbox, then even with the largest paratha size your lunchbox can accommodate you leave more than 20% of its surface space unused?

Does this “criminal wastage” bother you?

You can’t beat geometry. But you can pack parathas in your square lunchbox without an inch of space going waste. Let me show you how.

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Inspired by the chapter on curry leaves in Ratna Rajaiah’s fascinating book How the Banana Goes to Heaven, I recently resolved to eat curry leaves as much and as raw as I possibly can. The prospect wasn’t enticing, let me say that up front! Though I like curry leaves, I find their taste overpowering and use them sparingly even in tadka. I would have to steel myself to eat curry leaves raw – or so I thought.

How wrong I was.

A hesitant stab at making curry leaves and peanut chutney turned out to be hugely successful. Roasted peanuts balance the slight bitterness of curry leaves, making this chutney delicious.

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