The Steaming Pot - Easy vegetarian recipes from India

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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Aloo posto is a popular Bengali dish – potatoes cooked in poppy seed paste, served with pooris or plain boiled rice. This delicately flavored curry gets its spice kick from two other trademark Bengali ingredients: mustard oil and panch phoron.

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A multi-spiced dish with chickpeas, channa masala is a great favorite in north India. This is also a wise dish to have on the menu when you’re cooking an Indian meal for a big gathering – it is easy to prepare in large quantities since there isn’t much chopping or watching over involved.

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What can one do with wheat flour, onion and tomatoes? Make stuffed parathas of course. This filling came to be simply because I was out of other vegetables and it was raining too heavily for me to venture out and restock. Sometimes, necessity and laziness can produce wondrous results. Onion tomato parathas are proof!

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You get the most novel types of brinjals (eggplant) in Karnataka – today I picked up small bright round green brinjals, with gentle lines of white and purple, and prepared a quick side dish to go with rice and dal. Here’s how you could make crispy green brinjal.

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How do no-onion-no-garlic dishes make up for the missing flavors of onion and garlic, the essence of most Indian curries?

This is a thumb rule that "pure" vegetarians (no-onion-no-garlic eaters) will tell you –

1. Substitute garlic with asafoetida.
2. Substitute onions with nigella seeds.

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