The Steaming Pot - Easy vegetarian recipes from India

Green eggplant in mustard-fenugreek masala is not for the faint-hearted. The spices in this are heavier and headier than, say, in bittersweet baingan. Try it if you dare!

I made this dish with long green eggplant, which is the mildest-tasting variety of eggplant I know of. The eggplant’s blandness gives a nice base to the strong flavors of the spices. (more…)

Confession time: I had to Google "nenua in English" for this post. I learnt that the vegetable is called sponge gourd: the name comes from the fact that the fibrous core of the gourd is dried and used as a sponge/loofah. Not surprisingly, the Latin name of sponge gourd is Luffa cylindra.

Be that as it may, it feels stilted to call the very Bihari nenua "sponge gourd" especially since I’m blogging about a very Bihari recipe. I’ll continue calling it nenua in this post.

Gourds pair well with dal, as in the lovely ridge gourd moong dal. Nenua chana is another case in point. This is a very uncomplicated recipe with few ingredients, the perfect kind for a new cook to test their skills on.

(more…)

Sem is Hindi for broad beans, a variety of beans with a distinct robust flavor. This recipe for aloo sem – i.e. potato and broad beans curry – is the typical way the curry is made in a "pure" vegetarian (no onion or garlic) household in Bihar.

(more…)

This eggplant fry recipe makes a great side dish, especially when the rest of your meal is low on spices. It’s often on my menu for a quick weekday dinner, with boiled rice, raita and simple pressure-cooked yellow dal. Which is not to say that it does not work well with a lavish party meal but yes, it does add a special je ne sais quoi to otherwise masala-free fare.

(more…)

In my pre-teen years, food mentions in books would send my senses into overdrive visualizing them. The less familiar the food, the more vivid the imagined details. "Hot buttered scones", said Enid Blyton, and I pictured mildly sweet nimki-like snack twisted into conical shape, dripping with melted butter. "Lemonade" to my mind was a cross between nimbu pani and Limca. "Red radishes" were slender, graceful and blood red, more alluring than the humble white we had access to.

Reading Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel The Namesake, I realised I am not much changed today. Ashima makes "thick channa dal with swollen brown raisins" for her party. What can that be like?  Now I don’t just imagine, I cook my interpretation of it :)

(more…)

Doesn’t food acquire an exotic sheen when described in language alien to its roots? Mangodi sounds like something grandmas from my native place would add to curries simmering in earthen pots. Sundried lentil dumplings? That’s like stuff my hostel-residing cousins in Bangalore would cook on a rare Sunday, as they do pasta and bruschetta.

But there you have it. Mangodi = sundried lentil dumplings. Choose the name you like. Made of ground moong dal with a hint of salt and spices, mangodi globules are sun-dried for 2-3 days before they are ready to use in curries.

(more…)