The Steaming Pot - Easy vegetarian recipes from India

One-pot meal lovers, this one’s for you. Vegetable pulao (or pilaf, as it is popularly spelled in some parts of the world) is a rice dish cooked with vegetables and spices, typically served with yogurt or raita for a complete meal.

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The very versatile spinach goes into this very green one-pot rice meal, making it a wholesome Sunday lunch option.

I normally keep coriander pesto handy in the fridge for a quick addition to salads or sandwich spread. Putting some pesto into spinach rice, along with the garnish of fried cashew nuts, worked wonders with the otherwise simple meal.

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A one-pot rich rice meal bulging with flavors – whole garam masala, the heat and crunch of peppercorns, peas and cashew nuts, fried onions and ghee. Peas and cashew fried rice on a lazy Sunday afternoon at home, what more could one ask for?

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Leftover boiled rice gives us plenty of opportunity for reshaping into new avatars, doesn’t it? I had a tempting pack of button mushrooms with me and used it for this mushroom fried rice tonight.

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Khichdi isn’t exactly the height of culinary sophistication – but sometimes we don’t want culinary sophistication. Hands up all men and women living away from family who, after a series of spice-laden oily meals outdoors and countless packets of instant noodles, crave simple home-cooked khichdi?

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Other than Indian dishes using spinach (spinach toor dal, aloo palak, palak paneer), I love to cook pasta with spinach as its prime ingredient. Here’s a simple spinach cheese pasta recipe.

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They talk of "trial by fire" as a true test of character – instances of it abound in medieval Europe as much as Indian mythology.

While one may question the veracity of such a test with reference to people, it does throw up interesting results when applied to fruits and vegetables.

I’m referring to roasting.

Placing raw whole vegetables on an open flame and slow-cooking them brings out latent attributes that you wouldn’t even know existed. Roasted capsicum becomes juicy and sweet, shedding much of its pepperiness; tomatoes take on a delicious smoky note.

This tomato olive capsicum pasta – with its key ingredients roasted – has a lot of character. It has been through trial by fire, after all.

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