OUR VEGETARIAN BLOG
PUNJABI-STYLE BEETS WITH GINGER PUNJABI CHUKANDAR KI SABZI
North Indians nearly always start beet dishes with the raw vegetable and generally cut it quite small so the pieces can be picked up easily with morsels of local flatbreads or rice. Save the stems and leaves, if you have them, for another dish. Serve this sweet, sour,…
DELHI-STYLE GREEN BEANS WITH GINGER AND GREEN CHILIES SEM KI SABZI
I love to eat this simple dish from North India with a dal, such as the Nepalese Black-eyed Peas with Potatoes and Bamboo Shoots, rice, and a yogurt relish. It may also be served with a Western meal. Beans in India are generally fully cooked and rarely crisp. They…
STEAMED GREEN BEANS WITH MUSTARD AND COCONUT HURALIKAYI PALYA
Meera Prasad is a very successful doctor in Bangalore. She belongs to a community of Shivalli Brahmins whose main temple, dedicated to Lord Krishna, is in Udupi, in northern Karnataka. Hundreds of people are fed at the temple daily, and it is here that young men come…
EGGPLANT IN A PEANUT AND SESAME SAUCE BAGARA BAINGAN
Baghara baigan is one of Hyderabad’s most famous and luscious sweet-and-sour vegetarian dishes. It calls for small eggplants that are partially quartered lengthwise, stuffed, fried, and then put in a sauce filled with roasted and ground sesame seeds and nuts, along…
STIR-FRIED EGGPLANT COOKED IN A TAMIL NADU STYLE KATHIRIKAI PORIYAL
Here is a wonderfully delicious southern poriyal. (For more on the subject, see the note.) This is a dry stir-fry, so it does not have a sauce. It is eaten with rather flowing dishes, such as a sambar (see South Indian Dal with Vegetables), rice, and yogurt relishes….
SIMPLE TWICE-COOKED EGGPLANT BAINGAN BHARTA
When an Indian child fighting with another Indian child says, “I am going to make a bharta out of you,” he or she means that the intention is to make a mash out of the other child. This is my way of explaining that bhartas are mashed vegetables, seasoned in a variety…
ROASTED EGGPLANT AND TOMATO BAIGAN CHOKAH
Chokah is eaten all over Bihar. In the villages there, it could be the only dish of the day, eaten with simple whole-grain flatbreads, such as chapatis, or rice. (Similar dishes, known as “bharta,” exist all across North India.) It can also be served as part of a meal…
SALAD OF PUFFED RICE, CUCUMBERS, ONIONS, AND TOMATOES JHAL MOORI
An inspired and variable mixture of vegetables, nuts, legumes, noodles, chutneys, and, most importantly, puffed rice, jhal moori is Calcutta street food par excellence, a kind of nutritious Bengali salad. It can be picked up from a vendor and eaten as a snack while on…
SPICY, CRISP PUFFED RICE NIBBLES MASALEDAR MURMURA
Many nations eat some sort of puffed rice. In the West, it is generally used for breakfast cereal, to be eaten with milk and sugar. In India, it is eaten in hundreds of different ways, some sweet but most others savory and spicy. The recipe here is for a crunchy,…
ORANGE AND RADISH SALAD NARANGI AUR LAL MOOLI KA SALAD
Here is another wonderful combination of fruit and raw vegetables that we often use to make our snack foods and salads. I find that it makes a light and delightful first course. This recipe may easily be doubled or tripled. You can use different types of radishes…
TOMATO SALAD TAMATAR KA SALAD
During the winter months, the tomatoes in our garden in India bore endless fruit. Some were made into juice for us to have midmorning, some were added to vegetable dishes and dals, and some were used to make salads. My father did not grow any heirloom tomatoes in…
CHERRY TOMATO SALAD WITH CURRY LEAVES CHHOTE TAMATAR KA SALAAD
Apart from being delicious, this is a very pretty salad that I often serve as a first course, sometimes combining it with cucumber spears. It is prettiest when made with cherry tomatoes of different sizes and colors. Placed in a single layer on a white plate, they…