and I are conducting a LIVE on Sunday, August 30th at 1pm EST. We will talk about one of my favorite topics in the world - Tadka and how a tadka of your favorite spices will inject an offbeat twist in everyday dishes. We will chat, cook, laugh and take questions. Isn’t that a lovely way to spend your Sunday afternoon? I hope you will join us! Click here to add this event to your calendar and to join the LIVE. If you are subscribed to The Delicious Bits Dispatch or ChutneyLovers you will also receive a link in your email and/or by push notification.

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Now we turn to our regular programming!

The list of things I miss from back home is long. As you can imagine, it is dominated by food - my mother’s cooking, streetside chaat, roasted corn lathered with salt, red chile powder, lime juice and Indo-Chinese.

What is Indo-Chinese, you ask? It’s a fusion cuisine that my birth country is crazy about. The Indian food delivery market was estimated at $ 61 billion in 2025 and is estimated to grow at a compounded annual growth rate of 27%. According to the same report by Expert Market Research, Chinese cuisine (technically Indo-Chinese) represents the second-largest cuisine category in this bustling food delivery market.

Jump to Gobi Manchurian recipe

Indo-Chinese cuisine boasts of dishes with oddball names - Vegetable Manchurian, Hakka Noodles, Chilli Paneer and American Chopsuey. They are found in fine dining and quick casual restaurants as well as street carts across India, even in rural areas, with kooky names like Dancing Buddha, Hungry Eyes and Hot Box. Mouth-numbing hot, bold spicy and in-your-face tangy flavors amidst crunchy, crispy textures shine in each and every dish. And within these flavors lies something indescribable; an X factor which transports me straight into food coma. An overall sense of wellbeing and satiety washes over me after an Indo-Chinese meal, and I sleep deep as if my bed is made of clouds.

For Indians, Indo-Chinese is Chinese. There is no Chinese, Chinese. So when I was getting ready to move to the US many moons back, considering the Chinese population in the US, I was assured of my weekly fix. Imagine my shocking devastation, when I walk into a Chinese restaurant somewhere on the East coast with palpitating taste buds, and find that the server, owner or the chef had never heard of any dish called Manchurian. Neither had any other Chinese restaurants.

Origins

Indo-Chinese cuisine originated in India. It is a uniquely Indian phenomenon and diametrically opposite to the mild Cantonese Chinese cuisine available in the US. Towards the end of 19^th century and early 20^th century, Hakka-speaking Chinese immigrated to the eastern Indian city of Kolkata (formerly known as Calcutta) to work in tanneries, ports and railways and soon established the country’s only Chinatown. Like immigrants have been doing for centuries, these Chinese settlers too adopted and adapted to their resident country’s practices, customs, rituals and eating habits. Chinese ingredients like soy sauce and vinegar mingled with Indian chile peppers - green and red, red chile powder, paneer to adapt to the spicy, hot, fried food craving palate of Indians. New restaurants sprung around Kolkata to satisfy the demand for this cuisine, which was supposedly foreign, but had a flavor blast like their own.

But this cuisine’s popularity skyrocketed in rest of the country after Nelson Wang, a reputed Indian restaurateur and chef of Chinese descent, entered the picture. He was working as a caterer in Cricket Club of India, Mumbai and he had not yet become THE Nelson Wang.

When asked to create a dish off the menu by a customer, Wang deep fried cubes of cornstarch-coated chicken first, followed by a sauce which started with basic Indian ingredients like garlic, ginger, green chile peppers sautéed in oil. And then instead of going the full Indian route with onions, tomatoes and garam masala, he added soy sauce followed by cornstarch and the fried chicken. This dish, called the Chicken Manchurian, went viral in that analog age and its crazed popularity spurred Wang to set up his restaurant, China Garden in Mumbai. A reputed fine dining restaurant even today, China Garden has expanded to other Indian metros too. Chicken Manchurian has become a must on each and every Indo Chinese menu, irrespective of class, location and type of clientele. Wang is often labeled the pioneer of this cuisine, which is also called Chindian.

Abundance of variations

Another reason for popularity of Indo-Chinese is the abundance of vegetarian dishes. Even though technically only 29-30% of the total Indian population does not eat meat, vegetarian options in any eating establishment are a must. Economic reasons also force many non-vegetarians to stick to vegetarian food. The Hakka settlers who started Indo-Chinese restaurants also took care to roll out a sizeable vegetarian menu to suit the Indian population. Every meat dish has a vegetable counterpart and in Mumbai, there is a Jain variation too. Let me explain.

Jainism is an ancient Indian religion that believes in non-violence. Strict followers of Jain faith do not eat root vegetables like garlic, ginger, onion and potatoes as they believe insects and organisms are killed in the process of uprooting these vegetables. The Jain community of Mumbai comprises of traders, businessmen, diamond merchants, stockbrokers; the ones with big bucks and appetite for novelty and variety in food. I believe that innovation on Mumbai’s food landscape is driven largely by these movers and shakers of India’s financial capital.

Indo-Chinese has so entered the DNA of Indian food landscape that local, homegrown delicacies have also spouted Indo-Chinese variations like Idli chilli, Schezwan dosa, Chinese bhel.

Idlis are traditional South Indian steamed cakes made from a fermented batter of rice and split black lentils. Dosa is a crepe-like pancake made from a similar batter. Idli chilli is leftover idli, deep fried to crispy pieces and then stir fried in a mix of soy sauce, vinegar, green chile peppers and hot sauce. Schezwan (obfuscation of Sichuan) dosa is a dosa wrapped with stir-fried vegetables (cabbage, carrots, scallions) lathered in a typical Indo-Chinese sauce and cut into rolls. Kudos to the ingenuity of those unknown heroes, who thought of these dishes.

RECIPE: GOBI MANCHURIAN

Gobi Manchurian is a jubilant dish that produces contentment in the eater. Gobi means cauliflower in Hindi. And the question about the word “Manchurian” and what is its meaning in the context of Indo-Chinese cuisine will forever remain a mystery.

Gobi Manchurian happens when lightly spiced, corn starched and crispy, deep-fried cauliflower florets are tossed in a tangy, spicy and hot sauce of soy sauce, rice vinegar and some other accoutrements of Chinese cuisine. The crispiness of the cauliflower doused in the stinging sharp sauce is a superb combination as well as contrast.

I did try this recipe with baked and battered cauliflower florets. But NO, the texture does not come close to the desired crispiness of Gobi Manchurian that deep frying brings.

Ingredients

• 3 tablespoons soy sauce

• 1.5 tablespoons rice vinegar

• 3 teaspoons Sri Racha sauce

• 1 teaspoon tomato sauce

• 1 teaspoon honey

• 1.5 teaspoons Kashmiri red chile powder (divided)

• 1 teaspoon crushed black pepper (divided)

• 1/2 cup All-purpose flour

• 1/2 cup cornstarch

• 3/4 teaspoon salt

• 1 small cauliflower cut into 1-1.5” florets (I got about 383 grams)

• 1 cup + 2 tablespoons vegetable oil

• 3 dry red chile peppers (like chile arbol)

• 2 tablespoons peeled, finely diced ginger pieces

• 2 fat garlic pods peeled and diced fine

• 4 scallions sliced thin (separate the green and white portions)

• 1 teaspoon sesame seeds

Serves 3-4

Method

• Combine 3 tablespoons soy sauce, 1.5 tablespoons rice vinegar, 3 teaspoons Sri Racha sauce, 1 teaspoon tomato sauce, 1 teaspoon honey, 1/2 teaspoon Kashmiri red chile powder, 1 teaspoon sesame seeds and 1/2 teaspoon crushed pepper in a bowl. Mix well.

• Pour 1/2 cup all-purpose flour, 1/2 cup cornstarch, 3/4 teaspoon salt, 1 teaspoon Kashmiri red chile powder and 1/2 teaspoon crushed black pepper into another mixing bowl big enough to fit the cauliflower pieces. Stir well and add 1.5 cups water and whisk to prepare a smooth slurry.

• Place a thick-bottomed sauté pan on the burner on medium heat. Pour 2 tablespoons oil and heat for 2 minutes.

• Add 3 dry red chile peppers and stir for a minute or two till the peppers turn color and become dark. Follow up with diced ginger and garlic. Sauté for a minute and then put in the white portion of the sliced scallions. Stir them for another 2 minutes.

• Pour the soy sauce, vinegar combination with 1.5 cups water and let it come to a boil. Add 1 tablespoon all-purpose/cornstarch slurry into the boiling mixture. Now watch this sauce pale and thicken beautifully right away. Once this thick sauce comes to boil, turn the heat off.

• Now we are going to deep dry the cauliflower florets. Heat 1 cup vegetable oil in a thick-bottomed pan (preferably with a pooled bottom like a wok) on medium-high heat.

• As the oil is heating up, pour the cauliflower pieces into the slurry and toss lightly. We want the slurry to coat the cauliflower florets in a thin layer.

• If you have a kitchen thermometer wait till the oil heats up to 360 degrees Fahrenheit. If you don’t, cast a tiny piece of coated cauliflower into the oil. If it bubbles up right away to the surface, the oil is ready. If not, wait and perform the test again.

• With a spoon fish out one floret at a time, hold it to the wall of the mixing bowl with a spoon for 2-3 seconds outside the slurry to drain off the excess and leave it into oil carefully. Fry 5-6 pieces at a time making sure they don’t crowd each other.

• Fry till the pieces acquire brown patchy edges and take them out of the oil with a slotted spoon on a paper towel lined plate.

• Once you have fried half the quantity, add them to the cooked soy and vinegar sauce, which would have cooled down by now. Finish frying all the pieces.

• Pour rest of the fried pieces into the sauce and mix them with light hand.

• We want the cauliflower to remain crispy, so we added the hot florets into a cooled down sauce.

• Garnish with green part of sliced scallions.

• Serve right away with cooked white or brown jasmine rice to enjoy the crispiness of the cauliflower. And I promise, if you do not or cannot, you will still enjoy the leftovers.

  

If you have some slurry leftover, dip some thinly sliced zucchinis or mix chopped spinach into the slurry for vegetable fritters. Yay!

Would you like to see more Indo-Chinese recipes?

Chronology of Steps

• Cook the white rice/brown rice beforehand if you are going to serve Gobi Manchurian with rice.

• Cut the cauliflower into florets

• Dice the ginger, garlic and scallions. Separate the scallions into white and green portions.

• Crush the black pepper if you are going to use fresh

• Bring out all the ingredients like the soy sauce, rice vinegar, Sri Racha sauce, tomato sauce, honey, Kashmiri red chile powder, All-purpose flour, cornstarch, salt, dry red chile peppers, vegetable oil and sesame seeds.

• Combine the soy sauce, rice vinegar sauce, tomato sauce, honey, Sri Racha mixture.

• Prepare the All-purpose flour, cornstarch slurry

• Cook the sauce starting with stir frying the alliums.

• Deep fry the cauliflower florets.

• Halfway through the deep frying, pour the cauliflower florets into the cooked sauce.

• Finish the deep frying and add the rest of the florets to the sauce.

• Garnish with scallions.

• Serve right away with rice.

What am I reading

Thanks to my dear friend, Karen, I had the opportunity to attend National Book Festival in DC last weekend. It was wonderful, just seeing the throngs of visitors, who I presume are book lovers, waiting in line to hear their favorite authors. We attended a session hosted by Marie Louise Kelley of NPR with Tayari Jones and Ann Patchett. Have you read Kin or Whistler? I have not, but I just read An American Marriage. Though not representative of a typical marriage, it was an interesting read.

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Lizzie Collingham declares in Curry; A Tale of Cooks and Conquerors, “In the West the chilli pepper is probably the spice most associated with Indian food. Dishes from every region of the South Asian subcontinent use fresh, dried, ground, or powdered chillies; it is difficult to imagine Indian cookery without them. And yet no Indian had ever seen, let alone cooked with a chilli before the Portuguese arrived in India at the beginning of the fifteenth century.”

Before these fingers of fire and life arrived in my home country, Indians were eating long pepper aka pippali and the round pepper aka gol mirchi (black pepper we use today). The English word pepper hails from the Hindi word pippali.

And what a welcome the chile peppers received! Vasco de Gama arrived in southern India on the Malabar coast in 1498 and within 30 years, different types of chile pepper plants were growing around Goa, a state on the western coast of India which became the Portuguese capital in India. In Indian Food Tradition: A Historical Companion, K T Achaya writes, “The chilli was avidly received in India. It could be grown all over the country, unlike pepper, and even in every backyard, with a pungency much greater than that of pepper. Perhaps the physical resemblance of the chilli pod to that of long pepper may have hastened its acceptance.”

Unlike the black pepper, the chile peppers were inexpensive, packed a flavor punch and they soon became the flavoring of choice for the lower income groups.

The rest is, truly, history. Chile peppers have long entered the consciousness of Indians, culture and lexicon. “Mirchi lagna” is a metaphor used in slang Hindi, when someone is irate or jealous. Mirchi means chile peppers and lagna means getting hit. Nothing better conveys this meaning than this banger from a 1995 Bollywood movie “Coolie No. 1”. The words mean I’m on my merry way, enjoying street food and taking out a girl, why are you jealous. Enjoy the silly outrageousness of this song!

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I feel incomplete and anxious without two things in my kitchen/pantry – potato chips and chile peppers. Why? The heart has its ways!

Chile peppers are used in a variety of ways and forms in my kitchen. So here are three condiments – one from green chile peppers, one from red chile powder and one from dry whole chile peppers.

RECIPE # 1 - THECHA

Native to my home state of Maharashtra, thecha is a blazing hot chutney that boasts of green or red chile peppers as its star ingredient. Thecha is basically crushed green or red chile peppers – either cooked or raw - accented with seasonings like garlic, peanuts, lime juice or cilantro. Essentially farmer food, the name thecha comes from verb “thechane,” (in Marathi, the language of Maharashtra) which means to crush or pound. The typical crushing tool is a stone mortar and pestle. But it’s not uncommon for Mr. or Mrs. Farmer to pluck green chile peppers from the unfussy, can-grow-anywhere plants, destem, wash them and pound them into a lumpy, jagged paste in between two smooth stones along with some coarse salt. Paired with sorghum bread and finished with oil, thecha is a fiery kick. It wakes up the palate and makes me do a happy dance.

Thecha has become the darling of fine dining restaurants of Mumbai, food influencers and recipe developers. Till recently, thecha was a beloved condiment, enjoyed with roti or sorghum bread. Now it’s become fodder for newfangled, unheard-of recipes like thecha millet chowmein, thecha paratha, thecha pulao. More power to unbridled creativity! Yes, no? What say?

Ingredients

• 3.5 - 4 oz thai chile peppers (I got about 35 of them in my 4 oz pack)

• 5 oz long green chile peppers (I got about 5 peppers)

• 2 oz garlic pods (about 20 medium-sized pods)

• 1/2 cup raw peanuts

• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil

• 1 teaspoon coarse sea salt

Yield - about 1 3/4 cup

Method

• Combine both types of peppers, garlic pods, 1/2 cup peanuts and 2 tablespoons vegetable oil in a skillet. I prefer a cast iron skillet but use any skillet of your choice.

  

• The reason for using two types of peppers is to temper the heat. The mildness of long green peppers works as a counter against the intense heat of thai chile peppers.

• As long as you have a combo of hot pepper and a not-so-hot pepper, feel free to identify your own peppers. A great way to strike up a conversation at the farmer’s market, isn’t it? Just make sure that both the peppers don’t have a thick skin like jalapenos, which prevents them from cooking evenly. And if they don’t cook evenly, they will introduce an unpleasant and cough-inducing heat.

• Cover the skillet and cook at medium heat. Within a few minutes everything will start crackling and your kitchen will be filled with a heady garlicky aroma.

• Uncover and stir frequently. The peppers will start becoming pale, peanuts will darken and garlic pods will acquire brownish sheen.

• Turn the heat off after 15 minutes. Allow the peppers to cool with the cover on.

• Now throw the peppers first in a mortar and pestle with 1 teaspoon coarse salt.

• Once you stop seeing pieces, add the peanuts and garlic. If you don’t have a M&P, food processor is an okay option. But avoid a blender because we don’t want a pepper paste. A food processor will shred ingredients into fine pieces but might not marry all flavors. In contrast, a pestle will pulverize, forcing the peppers, garlic and peanuts to release their essence, oils, flavors and unite in a holy matrimony. Ultimately we want a jagged, irreverent hunk of crushed pepper where some pepper skin is still visible.

• Store in the fridge in a glass bottle. Will last well for a week at least. You can freeze it too.

• My favorite way to eat thecha is by tearing chunks of crusty bread or pieces of day-old roti and scooping up the thecha topped with olive oil.

RECIPE# 2: HOMEMADE RED HOT SAUCE

A few years back, I was visiting family in the eastern part of India where we decided to make Indo-Chinese (await the next post on this coveted fusion cuisine of India). We had all the ingredients but the hot sauce, which meant a trek/drive into town. Not wanting to do that, this sauce was born.

Ingredients

• 25 Kashmiri dry red chile peppers (about 1 oz)

• 15 Chile arbol (about 0.5 oz)

• 25-30 medium garlic pods (about 3 oz)

• 1 teaspoon vegetable oil

• 6 teaspoons rice vinegar

• 2.5 teaspoons salt

Method

• Place Kashmiri dry red chile peppers and chile arbol in a mixing bowl. Pour 3 cups boiling water and cover the bowl. Allow the peppers to soak for 45 minutes.

• Pour 1 teaspoon vegetable oil in a skillet and roast the garlic pods until they get a brownish skin. Let the garlic cool down.

• Fish out the peppers after 45 minutes and put them in a blender. Save the crimson soaking water.

• Combine cooked garlic pods, 6 teaspoons rice vinegar and 2.5 teaspoons salt and 1 cup soaking water.

• Blend fine. Adjust the consistency by adding more soaking water if you want a thin sauce.

• Store the sauce in a clean glass bottle. Let the sauce settle down for 24 hours in the fridge before use. It will last for two-three weeks in the fridge.

• Do I really need to tell you how to use this sauce?

RECIPE# 2: QUICK CHILE CRISP

Do you remember mithbhurkaa, a condiment from my home state? It is a quick chile crisp made from pantry contents. Garlic pieces and red chile powder are the star ingredients. Now please note that the recipe below is a pared down version of mithbhurkaa. The garlic pieces become crispy and crunchy and shine beautifully against something hummus or noodles.

Ingredients

• 10 medium garlic pods peeled

• 3 tablespoons vegetable oil

• 2 teaspoons Kashmiri red chile powder

• 1 teaspoon sesame seeds

• 1/8 teaspoon salt

Method

• Dice garlic pods into pieces

• Heat 3 tablespoons vegetable oil in a small pot on medium low heat

• After heating oil for 2 minutes, add diced garlic to the oil and stir to avoid the garlic for burning.

• Once you see the garlic turning in color, add 2 teaspoons red chile powder, sesame seeds, 1/8 teaspoon salt and turn the heat to low.

• Mix well and turn the heat off.

• The garlic will crunch up while cooling down.

• Now use this chile crisp-like condiment on everything. This will last at room temperature for a month. Over the weekend, I garnished my store-bought lemon-dill hummus with this quick chile crisp. The crunch of the garlic against the velvety smoothness of hummus was marvelous.

  

  

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In the next post, we will be discussing my absolute favorite fusion cuisine, Indo-Chinese. One of the things I miss dearly from home.

I was trying to figure out the mechanics of LIVE this evening and inadvertently an email notification was sent out that a LIVE event is coming up. My apologies for bombarding your mailbox with another email you did not need.

Does this mean a LIVE is coming up? Maybe! Stay tuned and have a lovely week ahead!

We have talked about the way I prepare rice. I have obsessively been thinking about the best Indian bread recipes for you all, something which will be stress-free and nimble for a weeknight dinner. (Eventually we will get to rotis but today is not that day).

ChutneyLovers

A pantry meal for crappy and happy days

I pray Pithla bhaat and mithbhurkaa is my last supper. This is what I eat after a crappy day, happy day and on days, I don't want to use my brain cells…

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2 years ago · 9 likes · 12 comments · Annada D. Rathi

And finally, a few weeks back I remembered Paange, an unleavened whole wheat bread that is doable on a weeknight, stays beautiful the next day and requires minimal rolling. My mother cooked them on harried evenings, when rolling rotis was a chore.

I will most definitely forget to pay a bill or call a handyman for a leak, but my food memory is sharp as a Miyabi knife. I will rattle off specific details about what my paternal aunt made for lunch when I surprised her with a visit while in college or how my mother prepared her annual mango pickle or what chutney my grandmother served with idlis (this one is total outlier, folks. Unlike the typical coconut or peanut chutney, she was the only one serving idlis with a raw banana chutney).

RECIPE - PAANGE, EASY WHOLE WHEAT BREAD

Paange is a small, 3-4”-in-diameter whole wheat bread roasted traditionally in a clay oven. My mother roasted them on a skillet while our recipe is going to use the oven. With minimal ingredients - flour, salt, fat of your choice and water -, a short prep and cook time, Paange are an ideal weeknight bread.

Ingredients

• 1 cup whole wheat flour

• 1/2 teaspoon salt

• 3 tablespoons ghee or vegetable oil

• 1/4 cup water

Makes 4

Method

• Mix 1 cup whole wheat flour, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 3 tablespoons ghee or vegetable oil in a mixing bowl.

• Massage the fat into the flour nicely and slowly. The flour should form into a loose mass, which indicates that the fat has incorporated into the flour.

• Pour water slowly. Add the 1/4 cup water to prepare a firm dough. Knead till the dough is neat and not sticky. Let the dough rest for 30 minutes.

• Knead the dough for 10-15 seconds after resting. You will see that the dough has become smooth and all the craggy edges are gone.

• Divide the dough into four balls. Press each ball into a flat disc.

• Roll out the disc into a circle with a diameter for 3.5”-4”. The thickness is about eighth of an inch or like a thick pancake.

• Pre-heat the oven at 300 degrees Fahrenheit. Since I made only 4 paange, I used my toaster oven.

• Place the paange in the center rack in the oven. Within a few minutes, they will start fluffing. After cooking for a total of 10 minutes, turn them over. Cook for 5-6 minutes. The paange should have brown patches and a light-brown sheen.

• Serve them hot with a generous layer of ghee or olive oil.

• Paange pair wonderfully with any beans, stew or saucy vegetables. If fresh and hot, I will just eat them on their own. After two days, they tend to become a little hard but still remain chewy inside, so I like to eat them as a savory cookie with my coffee.

  

How I love to eat Paange

I love to eat paange with plain yogurt and mango pickle.

Have you heard of the phenomenon that is an Indian pickle?

Pickles are deeply rooted in the Indian psyche. Every Indian will have a pickle story about how their grandmother, mother, aunt or neighbor made an exceptional one, whose taste they can still feel on their tongue. Like kimchi, homemade Indian pickle is a relic-of-the-past and a fast-disappearing cooking style that places importance on DIY, no matter how much time and effort it takes.

Indian pickles are very different from the vinegar-based pickles in the US. A robust mix of hearty spices like mustard powder, fenugreek seeds powder and red chile powder, the preservatives that make Indian pickles last the whole year amidst the heat and humidity are salt and oodles of oil. Though raw, green mango is the favorite candidate for pickling throughout the country, anything and everything can be turned into a pickle. Carrots, turnips, green chile pepper and lime are happily pickled in North India while South Indians like their small mango, lime, tomatoes, eggplant, ginger while West Indians prefer raw mango, green chile pepper.

Pickles are available in tons In Asian grocery stores. Buy a mango pickle and apply a thin layer to your bagel and cream cheese, replace the heat in your chilli with a blob of pickle, add a dash to sour cream and eat with warm naan or pita.

Here are some of my favorite pickles -

(Please note I will make a small commission if you buy from these links)

Priya Tomato pickle

Deep Hot Mango Pickle

In the next post of ChutneyLovers, it’s going to get hot, hot, hot! We are going to delve into a chile sauce, chile crisp-like dip and a chile forward condiment.

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Without that tree, the front of my house feels bald. As if an elderly senior citizen overseeing my house is no more!

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Please note that this is a rather long post. If you are reading it in email, you will find it clipped. Click “Read Entire Message” link at the bottom and the whole post will open in a new window.

Cooking is one of the few things in life which makes me reflect, remember, contemplate and create listicles. My phone is filled with notes about culinary mistakes, reminders, notes of caution, things to do and things not to do. Having cooked consistently for a while, as you can imagine, this list has swollen.

Remember the deal with “11?” You must be wondering, like any reasonable person, why the lessons are 11 and not a round number like 10 or 5. Blame it on my Indian upbringing and DNA! Every monetary transaction, cheque or cash gift with round numbers like 10, 20, 30 is increased by one. “One” is considered auspicious in Hindu spirituality as it symbolizes the Supreme One. This practice also underlies the belief that life and the divine are One.

1) Cooking is an act of love

It gives me immense joy and satisfaction to cook for the people in my life – family, friends and acquaintances on their way to becoming friends. You are cooking for the people you love - cook what they want, the way they want - not the way you want.

Repetitive acts like cooking can get you into a zombiesh rut where the only reason for doing something is because you have done it 951 times before. I season guacamole with freshly roasted ground cumin as I love the pop of aroma and flavor the roasting brings. But my Guru prefers ground, unroasted cumin. Initially when he made it a few times with unroasted cumin, it tasted good but the awareness about this difference kept pinching me.

The next time I was not around when he prepared the guacamole, and I wolfed it down as if avocados were about to become extinct. Why? Because that awareness about unroasted cumin was not front and center.

So what’s the big deal? Mindless wars are being fought, and we are out to bake and burn the earth! Does it REALLY matter if the cumin is roasted or not and does it really matter enough to carry it with you as a baggage?

2) You will never stop learning

When I was a kid, like all other kids, I wanted to become an adult asap. The naïve, ignorant me thought, adulthood meant end of confusion, cluelessness, second guessing and as soon as I became an adult, I would somehow become all-knowing! What a crock of BS! In the immortal words of a college friend, can you imagine hanging out with your idiotic teenage self? No, thank you!

I am finding out that I am learning, forgetting and re-learning EVERYDAY, which I like to tell myself is good to stave off cognitive decline.

Recently I cooked Sukhe Aloo in a hard anodized pan while forgetting my own instructions. The boiled potato pieces coated the pan with a stubborn deposit that required some serious elbow grease to get rid of.

ChutneyLovers

Weeknight Potato Recipes

I’m writing this post from NYC, sitting in the cutesy Chote Miya (“Chote” means “small” in Hindi and “Miya” is a Hindi/Urdu word that has a range of meanings from “dude,” “master,” “sir” to “husband.”) restaurant of the Chelsea Market. It sells iconic products most Indians of my generation grew up with - Parle G biscuits, Limca (a lemony, fizzy soda), c…

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a year ago · 18 likes · 10 comments · Annada D. Rathi

3) Cooking is humbling, similar to life

Cooking and life try to teach you lessons through mishaps, mistakes, misalignments, mismatches. Even if you have made the dish 9,999 times, something can go awry 10,000^th time.

Last week I planned mung bean pancakes for dinner as I landed some gorgeous homegrown spinach from a friend’s garden. Soaked the whole green mung beans and blended them with spinach to a verdant green batter. I heated my favorite cast iron pan and ladled the pancakes into a stupor-inducing circle.

But my cheerful reverie was broken - my pancakes stuck to the cast iron pan like barnacles clinging to a rock. My first pancake was a lumpy mess, so was the second one. I brought out a non-stick pan but the same result! I panicked.

Isn’t it insanely optimistic on my part to expect that my cooking plans will go swimmingly smooth every single time? And when things go wrong, I am shocked, disillusioned and feel victimized because my misplaced bubble has been burst. Isn’t that how we go through life?

It dawned upon me, finally, that the cast iron pan was not hot enough. The temperature of the pan came up to the mark, the pancakes turned out fine.

How many times must I have used a cast iron pan to make dosas and pancakes! I KNOW THAT PAN NEEDS TO BE HOT, REALLY HOT. How can I make this make the same mistake and go down the rabbit hole of self-doubt inflicted misery once again? But you know what, it’s the wrong question to ask because it is a guaranteed path to grief.

Instead, jump into the trenches to find the solution, make a note about why the venture could have gone wrong, chin up, learn and move on.

4) Respect other people’s taste, preferences

Yukking other people’s yum should be banned. I’m bamboozled when I see people brazenly declare that their collected experience of a particular dish is “authentic.” Recently I was told that an ingredient common in Western India in Yogurt Rice is unknown, while something else is more appropriate. And without ever having tasted my recipe, an emphatic comment “they (that ingredient common in western India) will not go well in this preparation,” followed by their AUTHENTIC recipe. My question for that person was AUTHENTIC FOR WHOM?

Everyone’s authentic is different. What you have grown up eating is completely different from what I have. What I ate as a kid feels authentic to me, but I respect that it will not be the same for you. That is the cardinal rule of any food discussion and food writing. While I am at it, stop using the word “authentic” in food writing.

5) It’s okay if you eat something you don’t like

I tend to put too much currency on what I like and what I dislike, especially in food. I have big opinions about how something should be cooked, and how something should taste. In short, I take myself too seriously. Absolutely nothing will happen to you or the world, if you eat an unliked vegetable or sample an untried dish or flavor. This becomes critical when you are a guest or someone has cooked for you and I happily choose disingenuity over truth when asked my opinion.

6) Take risks in cooking

While referring to a recipe, don’t get shackled by it. Try it once as it is and see how it rocks your boat. If you feel like making it again, feel free to make changes, substitute the spice because feel like it or because you don’t have it, increase the heat, or reduce the salt. What’s the worst that can happen. You may have to eat something that is not to your liking!

I have said this before. At a fundamental level, every recipe should aim to free the home cook of the need for a recipe. As one cooks from cookbooks and online recipes, the acquired and accumulated knowledge base should eventually cut the cord and permit the home cook to roam confidently in the land of intuitive cooking - to craft a meal around what is tipping towards expiry date in the fridge and pantry, to become comfortable in cooking for an impromptu party and to tailor a meal to the preference and likes of people you are cooking for, even if it means changing your cooking style.

7) Spice and re-spice

Spicing once is not enough at all. For example, look at this beany recipe of mine – Saucy Black Eyed Peas.

After adding tomatoes, the recipe calls for seasoning with salt and sugar to draw out the moisture from tomatoes. It is my natural instinct to under salt resulting in an underwhelming dish. I have to be consciously aware of this habit and taste, test and re-test for the salt quantity. The spices too quieten down in the process of cooking, so I need to resalt and re-spice with a tad bit of ground coriander and/or garam masala towards the end. Over the years, re-spicing and resalting has made my seasoning spot-on.

Taste the dish at various stages of doneness! This invites a collective gasp of horror from Indian Aunties Police Force (IAPF) throughout my home country. Well, I have come across veteran cooks who can detect the adequacy of salt just by the dish’s aroma. I pray for this superpower!

8) Decide how to use vegetables based on their freshness or lack of

In my kitchen, the freshness of a vegetable/herb or lack thereof dictates the preparation. Chopped cilantro serves as a garnish initially after purchase but as it starts losing its luster, it transforms into a verdant, hot and spicy chutney that will animate palates for days to come. Chutneys are a robust and appetizing way of prolonging life of herbs. Fresh from the farmers market vegetables are perfect for roasting, stir-fries and sabjis (cooked, spiced vegetables) while puckered-skin tomatoes, shriveling cauliflowers, drying cabbages, browning broccolis are the fodder for soups and stews. Pay attention to these distinctions, value them, check vegetables frequently after purchase. Don’t fall into the habit of out of sight, so everything must be fine.

Here’s what happened with me recently – I had okra, we love okra - crunchy, pan-friend okra or stuffed one. But okra languished in my fridge, and I remained naively optimistic and prepared this stuffed okra (stuffed with a combo of crushed roasted peanuts and sesame, ground coriander, red chile powder and raw mango powder.) It looked gorgeous before and after slow roasting in oil.

But the sabji turned out stringy, dry and supremely irritating. What a letdown of such a gorgeous looking produce! The note in my phone says, “COOK OKRA RIGHT AWAY.”

9) Use the right pot/pan

Choosing the appropriate pot/pan is one of the most important decisions you will make before launching into dinner prep. Remember the Sukhe Aloo I cooked in a hard anodized pan! Last month during the heat wave, I could not think of anything else but Yogurt Rice. My husband says, I am too attached to my tadka pot, which I am. Despite a large quantity of the rice, I chose the tiny tadka pot with tons of oil in it. The quantity increased with addition of peanuts, curry leaves and dry whole red chile pepper. As a result of the stirring, a whole lot of hot oil spilt out tarnishing my burner. Cleaning up that burner required so much precious time and energy!

Aloo Gobi is generally cooked in a pot on the burner; ovens are not common. I start with a tadka of vegetable oil and cumin seeds. Once the cumin sizzles, cauliflower florets go in the pot. Steaming cauliflower is a strict no-no in Aloo Gobi so the florets are cooked in the moisture/juices brought on by salting the vegetable. But there should be enough space for the moisture to evaporate. This note recently posted by of Recipes Recommended explains this process in succinct words. Thank you, Andrew! This note was perfection.

In so many food videos, I see deep frying in a cast iron high edge skillet. It baffles me because that 10”-12” skillet is going to need so much oil. In India, we have wide U-shaped wok-like pots called kadhai. The curved bottom lets the oil pool which economizes the oil required.

10) Extend a dish for a large crowd by combining lentils & vegetables

Homecooks are a magnificent species. Apart from balancing and multi-tasking like an
Olympic gymnast, one of their super skills is stretching the dollar. I have seen homemakers pull out a wad of cash from underneath their neatly arranged sarees, collected by saving and skimping. The Indian Aunties Police Force (IAPF) has lethal ability in this department.

One of their saving tricks is extending a dish for a large crowd by combining vegetables with lentils. Vegetables get really expensive in the burning heat of Indian summers, so IAPF deploys the cool trick of cooking lentils with vegetables to feed a large family. Some favorite combos I have seen are garbanzo beans and potatoes, chana dal and opo squash, spinach and moong dal.

11) Amplify the oomph at every stage of cooking

Never let go of the opportunity to layer flavors into a dish. Substitute tadka of olive oil instead of plain olive oil in salad dressings. Throw whole spices like cinnamon, black cardamom and bay leaf while cooking beans and most definitely salt them. Salted, cooked black chickpeas are a superb have-nothing-to-do-so-eating snack.

Take the opportunity to season and flavor at every step, I learned this lesson when a delightful thing happened in my kitchen without my active contribution. I had some leftover oil after roasting chile peppers and out of sheer laziness and aversion to washing yet another pan, I roasted chopped mushrooms in that oil. They became divine in that chile-laden, flavorful oil.

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What I’ve been reading

I just finished reading The Editor by Sara. B. Franklin. It’s a brilliant biography of Judith Jones, the legendary editor behind the pioneering books of Julia Child, Madhur Jaffrey, Marcella Hazan, Edna Lewis, Claudia Woden, Lidia Bastianich, Irene Kuo and so many more. Judith was a dignified woman who stood up to the rampant patriarchy in the publishing industry, without ruffling feathers, just by the sheer force of her talent, instinct and prodigious output. I cannot read enough about such women who raise the glass ceiling for us without breaking it!

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In these joint posts, Geetika will expound on the season-appropriate vegetables and fruits and why it is important to change your eating regimen as weather changes. And I will present two seasonal recipes that will make you run to the farmer’s market or grocery store.

Today’s post is devoted to summer and out of the long list of summer produce that Geetika shared with me, I chose zucchini, yellow squash and arugula.

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Geetika: Annada is right — the list I sent her was long. Summer is generous that way.
Here is what Ayurveda wants you to know about eating in the heat.

Each season, according to Ayurveda, is governed by a particular energy. Winter belongs to Vata, spring to Kapha, and summer to Pitta. Composed of fire and water, Pitta governs metabolism, body temperature, and transformation. In summer, Pitta heat is already running high in everyone simply because the season itself is Pitta in nature. Adding more heat on top of that tips the balance. The goal in summer is not to match the heat. It is to counter it.

Food is one of the most effective ways to do that.

This is where seasonal eating stops being a wellness trend and starts making real sense. The vegetables showing up at your farmer's market right now — zucchini, yellow squash, arugula, to name a few, with corn and vine-ripened tomatoes not far behind — aren't there by accident. They are, by nature, cooling. Not cold. That is a difference worth noting.

In Ayurveda, cooling refers to a food's effect on the body, not its temperature. Cold food and drinks feel good in the moment, but they don't address the heat building up inside — and they can interfere with digestion in the process. Cooling foods work differently. They work from within, gently bringing the body's internal temperature down without disrupting digestion.

In India, where Ayurveda originates, the vegetable most prized for this purpose is lauki — also called ghia or bottle gourd — a summer staple that has been soothing overheated bodies for centuries. Zucchini and yellow squash are its closest cousins in the Western kitchen. Same concept, different continents.

Ayurveda also steers us toward three specific tastes in summer: sweet, bitter, and astringent. Look at what the season is already handing you. The sweet juicy fruits — watermelon, peaches, mangoes, berries — are hydrating, nourishing, and actively help bring Pitta down. The bitter greens — arugula, spinach, leafy greens — support the body's natural detoxification. Astringent foods like zucchini and summer squash help maintain balance without weighing you down. The season, it turns out, knows exactly what it is doing.

Not every summer meal should be cold — and I say this as someone who is not a heat lover and whose idea of a good time is not standing over a hot stove in July and August. Your digestion still needs warmth to function well, even in summer. Cold salads and smoothies have their place. Cooked food still belongs on your summer table and today we offer two recipes that are bright, summery, and quietly Ayurvedic in ways that will make sense now that you have the framework.

The Ayurvedic lens seems counterintuitive for most of us — I know it was for me. But understanding these principles helped me make sense of my own summer patterns, including the overheating I used to chalk up to just running hot. Maybe it will for you too.

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RECIPE # 1: CHEESY BAKED ZUCCHINI WITH AN INDIAN ZING

The idea for this recipe, you will not believe, came to me early in the morning – when I was reluctantly straddling between sleep and wakefulness. Was it a dream? Was it a message? Maybe, maybe not. But I woke up right away! And tried this recipe the same day in case my porous mind lost it.

This dish is perfect for the summer months when zucchini is coming out of your ears. In this baked dish, zucchini replaces pasta and in between mandolined slices of zucchini and marinara sauce is nestled a spicy hot, mix of grated cheese, diced onions, sliced chile peppers and chopped cilantro (or parsley). It’s the same cheesy mix that powered the Grilled Cheese Sandwich, Indian Style.

Ingredients

• Cooking spray or 1 teaspoon vegetable oil

• 1 medium zucchini sliced or mandolined (about 0.25” thick)

• 1 yellow squash sliced or mandolined (about 0.25” thick)

• 3/4 teaspoon salt divided

• 1 medium red onion peeled and thinly diced

• 3-5 thai chile thinly sliced

• ¼ cup chopped cilantro or parsley

• 3 cups grated cheese (I used a mix of cheddar cheese and aged mozzarella) divided

• 1/4 teaspoon crushed black pepper

• 2 cups marinara sauce (store-bought is fine, though nothing works as well as Marcella Hazan’s 3-ingredient tomato sauce)

Serves 3-4

Method

• Pre-heat the oven to 400 degrees.

• Spray a baking sheet with cooking spray. Or smear the baking sheet with a teaspoon of vegetable oil.

• Line the baking sheet with slices of zucchini and yellow squash in a single layer. Sprinkle ¼ teaspoon salt on the zucchini and squash slices. Bake for 7 minutes.

• Take the baking sheet out and turn each slice upside down with a pair of metal tongs. Bake the other side for 7 minutes. Turn the oven off. The slices would have shriveled and acquired a light brown sear. Let the slices cool down.

• Combine diced onions, sliced thai chile peppers, chopped cilantro/parsley with 2 cups grated cheese along with ½ teaspoon salt and ¼ teaspoon black crushed pepper in a bowl. Mix well. Set aside.

• Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

• Color the bottom of a baking dish, 8” x 8”, with a thin layer of marinara sauce.

• Line the bottom with slices of zucchini and yellow squash. I did half and half but hey, you can go a little crazy and follow a zig zag pattern of your choice.

• Follow up with thin layer of marinara. Then a blanket of the oniony, cheesy mixture. Repeat these three layers two more times.

• I ran out of the onion cheese mixture for the topmost layer, so the remaining 1 cup of grated cheese did the job.

• Bake at 400 degrees for 45 minutes.

• Let the Cheesy Baked Zucchini rest for 15-30 minutes before eating. Cut into square or rectangle pieces and serve with a green salad.

• Pieces of Baked Zucchini freeze beautifully and they taste glorious after a few days too.

  

Note: I tried this recipe without roasting the zucchini and squash and the dish was a saucy, unwieldy, albeit tasty lump.

ZUCCHINI CHUTNEY

My husband, Dinesh, is a lateral thinker and a superb cook. He does not allow the shackles of a particular method constrain him. Keeping in mind my love for anything and everything chutney, he whipped up this mind-blowing one many years ago. I had to coax this recipe out of him, as he claims he just put it together and has no memory of what he did exactly. Nevertheless, I have learned to trust his culinary instincts over the years because whatever comes onto the table after this slapdash process is delicious and, most important, poles apart in taste from what I come up with.

Ingredients

• 1 tablespoon vegetable oil

• 1/8 teaspoon turmeric powder

• 2-3 green thai chile peppers

• 2 big cloves garlic peeled

• 2 cups zucchini diced into 1” pieces (I got 2 cups from 1 big zucchini)

• 2 teaspoons roasted peanut powder **

• 3/4 teaspoon salt

• 1 ½ teaspoons lime juice

Yield – 1 cup

** If you use store-bought salted peanuts for the peanut powder, reduce the salt in the chutney to 1/2 teaspoon.

Method

• Combine 1 tablespoon oil, 1/8 teaspoon turmeric, 2 garlic cloves and 3 chile peppers in a thick-bottomed skillet and heat at medium heat. After about 5 minutes, the skin of the chile peppers changes color.

• Add 2 cups zucchini pieces and sauté intermittently. Turn off the heat after 10-12 minutes or till the zucchini starts turning soft. Do not let the zucchini get mushy. Let the mixture cool.

• Pour the zucchini mixture into the blender with 2 teaspoons peanut powder, ¾ salt and lime juice. Grind coarse.

• This chutney will last in refrigerator for a week to 10 days. It will taste delightful as a topping on rice and beans too

Geetika: Annada is truly a chutney making genius and it seems that so is her husband, Dinesh. I would never have thought of making a chutney with zucchini. Peanut powder is a new ingredient for me. When I thought of this chutney as a pesto of sorts – it made perfect sense.

Please feel free to leave out or reduce the chile peppers if that’s what will keep you from trying this wonderful recipe. I am definitely making this very soon and I might experiment with blistered shishito peppers since my heat tolerance has gone down.

Annada: Absolutely true, Geetika! The chutney has enough goodies to carry itself without the need for chile peppers. Shishito peppers is a great idea.

RECIPE # 2: SUMMERY PITA SANDWICH WITH ZUCCHINI CHUTNEY, TOMATOES AND FETA SEASONED ARUGULA

Ingredients

• 1 cup arugula roughly chopped

• 1/8 cup feta cheese

• Crushed black pepper

• 2 teaspoons olive oil

• ¼ teaspoon salt

• Two 5” regular or whole wheat pitas

• 2 heaping teaspoons zucchini chutney (recipe given above)

• 4 tomato slices

Method

• Combine 1 cup roughly chopped arugula, 1/8 cup feta cheese, crushed black pepper, 2 teaspoons olive oil and ¼ teaspoon salt in bowl and mix lightly. Set aside

• Heat up pita on a skillet or on the open fire to get a smoky char. Flip on the other side for the same.

• Spread 2 teaspoons zucchini chutney on one of them.

• Layer slices of tomatoes.

• Top with arugula, feta mixture.

• Cover with another warmed pita (feel free to spread the chutney on this pita too).

• Cut into 4 pieces and serve right away.

  

Geetika and I wish you a very happy summer and hope you eat the season.

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Chutney is currently available on Amazon India. I so appreciate wanting this book for her birthday and her husband jumping hoops to order it from India. My heartfelt thanks to both!

I am still trying all the chutneys from this book one by one and on a mission to bring them to you.

Just in case it has slipped your mind! Chutneys are flavor bombs, condiments of Indian origin - hot, tart, sweet, spicy or a delightful mixture of all - that yank your taste buds, set off a taste explosion on your tongue and transport an ordinary meal or snack to the realm of extraordinary. Because chutneys are such concentrated flavor blasts, they have a phenomenal crossover appeal across cuisines and recipes. These multitaskers seamlessly transform into dips, sandwich spreads, sauces, toppings, marinades and vinaigrettes.

Please note that majority of Indian chutneys are freshly made condiments whipped up from seasonal ingredients and generally made for immediate consumption. Of course, every culinary rule has a delicious exception and chutneys are no different. The chutneys which I have chosen for you today are equally tasty the day you eat them first and after a few weeks too. See, didn’t I tell you, the exception matches the rule in taste!

And because both these chutneys last for weeks, like your favorite hot sauce, it’s mighty useful having them around. And you will see why as I list the ways they can transform your meals.

Before I bring you the two recipes, let me digress just a tad bit.

I am extremely happy to introduce you to and her Substack. She is a fellow contributor to Chutney and I was super excited when she reached out to me by comments on my Rajma post.

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Here’s a recent post for you to enjoy the gorgeous photos and illustrations.

The Supper House by Âkanksha

Black Sesame Chicken/Til Diya Murgi/ Til diya Manxho, Part 1: The Question

I decided to make a dish I kept seeing online: black sesame chicken. Almost every version I saw online called it Assamese black sesame chicken, often using terms like “authentic” and “traditional”. The deep, almost black paste covering the chicken looked so tempting. I had never cooked anything that looked like this bef…

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3 months ago · 11 likes · 6 comments · The Supper House by Âkanksha

2 Chutneys from Chutney Book

Today I bring you chutneys from Bihar and Karnataka, two Indian states, highlighted in the map below. To give you a little bit of cultural context, Bihar played a central role in the historical development of Buddhism. Buddha is said to have attained enlightenment in Bodh Gaya in southwest Bihar.

Karnataka is a southern state and home to Bengaluru, a vibrant city and the hub of global hi-tech companies in India.

RECIPE 1 - BIHAR’S BARABAR KI CHUTNEY

By Stuti Dabral

(Recipe changed slightly to accommodate for ingredient availability)

This recipe immediately caught my attention because “barabar” in Hindi means “equal.” So Barabar ki chutney translates to chutney of equals. I could just go so meta on this name itself. But even coming down to earth, this chutney is so called because it contains equal amounts of main ingredients viz - green mango (hello ), green chile peppers, ginger and garlic. How clever is that!

Headnote from Chutney

Bihar’s northwestern Mithilanchal region is one of India’s largest producers of mangoes, with a number of unique varieties such as Gulaab Khaas, Jardalu and Malgoa. Sipiya mangoes are another local variety, beloved for their mild sweetness, non-fibrous pulp and thin skin. Unripe Sipiya mangoes can be pickled and turned into chutneys without peeling, and are the best variety to use in this recipe too.

Every household in Bihar will have a jar of this mouth-puckering condiment sitting out in the sun in their front yards, as soon as the first green mangoes appear on the trees and in the markets, at the start of summer.

Time: 25 mins (+8 hrs)

Makes: 2 cups

Ingredients

• ½ cup ginger, peeled & chopped

• ½ cup garlic, peeled

• ½ cup green chile peppers destemmed and chopped into 1” slices (thai chile peppers or any pepper with a thin skin)

• ½ cup unripe green mango, peeled & chopped OR ¼ cup amchur powder

• 2 tablespoons mustard oil (replace mustard oil with olive oil since mustard oil is banned as a cooking oil in the US)

• 1 teaspoon kalonji (nigella seeds)

• 3/4 teaspoon salt

Method

• In a blender jar or mortar and pestle, combine the ginger, garlic, green chile peppers and raw mango (OR amchur powder), and grind to a coarse paste.

• In a wide thick-bottomed pan, heat the mustard oil or olive oil and add the 1 teaspoon nigella seeds. Once the seeds crackles, add ground ginger, garlic, chile pepper and mango mixture and stir well.

• Cook on a medium flame until the oil starts to separate at the edges of the pan. Take off the flame and cool.

• Transfer to an air-tight glass container and leave it out in the sun to mature for a day before serving.

• This chutney will last for 3-4 weeks. Store in a clean glass container in the fridge.

How to use Barabar ki Chutney

• I made a super quick guacamole with Barabar ki Chutney. Just mashed half an avocado, added 1 teaspoon chutney, squeezed some juice and I had a fab guacamole ready. No dicing chile peppers, onions or tomatoes.

• Add Barabar ki Chutney to labneh, season with salt, garnish with some olive oil. Make a quick lunch out of it pairing it with a warm pita.

RECIPE 2 - KARNATAKA’S KARIVEPPILAI PODI

Curry leaf chutney powder, By Meeta Iyer

Recipe changed slightly

Chutneys are also prepared in dry, powder form making them super long lasting. This curry leaf chutney is one of them, which really increases the possibilities of the way it can be used.

Head note from Chutney

This is a chutney that my friend, the late Mita Iyer, made for me by the kilo when I was pregnant with my daughter. (Curry leaves are a powerful galactagogue, and this recipe is traditionally made with the addition of garlic and black pepper instead of red chillies for pregnant and lactating women). Meeta was a fabulous cook of both Bengali and Tamilian Brahmin cuisines, and one of my first teachers who opened my eyes to the diversity of regional Indian cuisine. This recipe has stayed a favourite, and I think of her every time I make it. Even today.

This simple recipe really brings out the flavour and aroma of curry leaf, an ingredient that I feel is extremely unappreciated - not just for their flavour, but also because they offer a powerhouse of nutrition, and medicinal qualities. Often overlooked because they are primarily used in tadkas across the country, you will be floored with how their flavour evolves when they are roasted or fried and used as an ingredient in their own right. Something this beautiful chutney powder brings out fabulously. Drizzle over with a little warm ghee or sesame oil, and have as an accompaniment to dosas, rice or rotis. ~ Rushina Munshaw Ghildiyal

Time: 25 mins

Makes: 1 ½ cups

Ingredients

• 2 cups curry leaves

• 2 tablespoons urad dal (split black lentils)

• 2 tablespoons chana dal (split chickpea lentils)

• 2 tablespoons sesame seeds

• 3-4 dry red chillies

• 3/4 teaspoon salt

Method

• In a heavy, wide pan set on a medium flame, dry roast the curry leaves, urad dal, chana dal, sesame seeds and dry red chillies, one by one, till they are aromatic, crisp, and golden brown. Set aside to cool on a wide plate.

  

• You should have 1 cup of curry leaves once roasted.

• In a blender jar, combine the roasted ingredients with 3/4 teaspoon salt, and grind to make sand or sugar textured powder.

• Do not grind hot or warm lentils, as they will clump and result in an uneven texture.

• Cool the ground chutney before transferring to an air-tight container. Store in a dry place, away from sunlight, for up to 3 months.

• Serve a few spoons of this chutney with a dollop of ghee or sesame oil, alongside hot rice, rotis, idlis or dosas.

How to use Curry leaf Chutney

• The curry leaf chutney is the best topping or garnish for fresh vegetables like sliced tomatoes, radishes and cucumbers. Sprinkle some chutney and finish off with your olive oil.

• Top a cream cheese shmeared bagel with curry leaf chutney.

• Garnish your baked potato and sour cream with curry leaf chutney.

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Aren’t these chutneys handy to flavormaxx your food?

ChutneyLovers

India’s Never-Ending Love Affair with Pressure Cookers

I was probably 8-9 months old, and my mother had taken me to my aunt’s, who was cooking lentils in a pressure cooker (PC). The shrill whistle rang through the entire apartment and within a minute came my howl. The unfamiliar sound scared the bejesus out of me. I was shaking and inconsolable, only stopping to catch my breath. My mother remembers that she…

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5 months ago · 34 likes · 73 comments · Annada D. Rathi

Well, all these hot takes led to vigorous discussion and robust engagement about legumes and how to walk the fine line between saving fuel and creating magical texture of legumes. One thing led to another and before long , and I hit upon the idea of a joint post to compare pressure cooking, stovetop cooking and Instant Pot cooking. And the dish we decided to conduct this comparative test on is rajma - a kidney bean stew from North India. Paired with rice, it is the comfort food of many North Indians.

Kidney bean is notorious to cook, and the frustration of inconsistently cooked beans or tough beans is common. I have most definitely faced it many times and being a recipe developer and food writer, I’m a little tired of chalking up these sub-par results to aged beans. So we decided to crack the code of kidney beans and compare which cooking method was the best.

But first things first -

Types of Kidney beans (courtesy )

And here’s a map of India if you want to place the states and the regions where rajma is found -

(Please ignore the highlights to the southern states of India).

Like tomatoes and chile peppers, it’s hard to believe that rajma (please note that the cooked stew as well as dry kidney bean are called rajma) is not native to India

And of course, because I did not know better before I read Harshita’s table, I have always cooked with red kidney beans, the toughest one to crack of all.

Cooking rajma in a pressure cooker

I love my two PCs. I have them in my daily rotation so cooking beans in a PC feels super organic to my culinary process and style. On one hand, it gives me satisfaction that I am not wasting cooking gas and on the other, I don’t have to go through the discomfort of hauling a bulky device from my bottom shelf to the counter.

Have you seen my post from last week with the recipe of rajma or rajma masala?

ChutneyLovers

Rajma, a kidney bean stew that evokes memories of mom's & grandmom's cooking

This is going to be ChutneyLovers’ eighth post dedicated to legumes. And you can bet my bean pantry, there’s more to come! Lentil fritters, beany dals, snacky bowls, savory pancakes and maybe even dessert…

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3 months ago · 18 likes · 14 comments · Annada D. Rathi

A precursor to this joint article, this post contained my recipe adapted from Chef Sanjyot Keer, YFL. One of the highlights of the original recipe was the ratio of 3 times water to 1-part dry kidney beans. And after pressure cooking, this bean-to-water proportion ensured a silky, velvety sauce, perfect to coat rice or paratha, your carb of choice.

As long as you know the amount of water/broth/liquid to add, the resulting consistency of the dish is highly desirable. For example, the pressure-cooked khichdi is a thing of beauty because the ultimate consistency is creamy and cohesive and makes you feel secure like in the honeymoon period of a relationship.

After pressure cooking, the beans were cooked - some broke down and some fully intact, and they broke down with a slight press. But opinions were divided and some in my family felt that they should become so soft that even a gentle press should not be required. But I was more concerned about the inconsistent cooking and believe that the old age of beans is responsible for this discrepancy. Another point to be noted is that the red kidney bean is a variety with the firmest of skins.

I couldn’t be happier to collaborate with and . Both are supremely passionate about their work and willing to research a topic to the end of the world. While Harshita loves to dig deep into the provenance of traditional recipes.

Apart from the breadth of global culinary knowledge that Lisa covers in her posts, the science corner is the absolute killer. And what I really admire about Lisa is she does not stop at the expected. She will go the extra mile and encourage us to do the same. In her rajma masala post, she not only gives two ways to cook rajma - one quick and easy for the weekday and one languorous for the weekend. And on top of this there is a special spice mix - aka rajma masala. How cool is that?

Culinary Repertoire

Rajma Chawal, Two Ways

Rajma chawal is one of the most comforting ways to cook kidney beans, and in this post I am sharing two versions I make at home: a richer stovetop and oven rajma for weekends, and a simpler stovetop …

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3 months ago · 16 likes · 9 comments · Lisa McLean

LISA’S WORDS

Cooking rajma on stovetop and oven

Slow cooking, flavour development, and layered heat

My own approach to rajma in this collaboration comes from the stovetop and from the slower arc of oven cooking. I was interested in what happens when you give the pot more time, allowing the beans and masala to settle into one another gradually. My work often moves between storytelling, kitchen practice, nutrition, and food science, and beans are one of those ingredients that reward exactly that kind of attention. On Culinary Repertoire, I write across recipes, spice traditions, and Science Corner essays, where evidence, tradition, and kitchen practice meet. In this collaboration, I am bringing the slower heat, the layering of flavour, and the textures that emerge when time is given room to work.

My own version follows a slower path. I used Jammu Rajma, soaked for 24 hours. The fresh beans cooked more quickly because of that long soak, and the stovetop version gave soft beans that were tender but not mushy. I also worked with a stovetop-to-oven method, where the rajma is first properly boiled, then finished in the oven for a further hour. This slower route is less about speed and more about flavour development, allowing the beans and masala to settle into one another over time. It is important to note that oven cooking is only safe once the beans have already been properly precooked and boiled for at least 12 minutes beforehand.

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Cooking rajma in an Instant Pot

I have admired Harshita’s posts for she digs into the hidden corners of history, geography, sociology and anthropology to trace the evolution of a dish. I also like her penchant for nailing traditional recipes like rumali roti and jalebi, which are on their way to becoming lost treasures.

Epicurean Dispatch - My Spicy journal

The Rise of Kidney Beans in India: Rajma-Chawal

Welcome…

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4 months ago · 28 likes · 12 comments · Harshita saxena

HARSHITA’S WORDS

Instant Pot Rajma : Modern comfort cooking, consistency, and adapting tradition for contemporary kitchens

My own work often sits at the intersection of food history, memory, migration, and home cooking. I am endlessly fascinated by how dishes travel, evolve, and quietly become emotional anchors for people across generations and geographies.

Through My Substack Epicurean Dispatch and my catering work, she preserves culinary heritage not as static but as living and adaptive. I tried to reflect the realities of many contemporary kitchens while still holding on to the comfort and significance of traditional food.

My Instant Pot version reflects the realities of many contemporary kitchens, especially those balancing comfort cooking with work, energy use, and limited time. In the test cook, the Chitra Rajma appeared completely intact on the outside, but beneath the surface, the beans were very well-cooked and easily mashed with light pressure. That result speaks to one of the Instant Pot’s strengths: a reliably creamy interior with comparatively little hands-on cooking.

I have been using the Instant Pot for over five years now, and honestly, it has become one of the most practical tools in my kitchen.

For dishes like rajma, it creates beautifully creamy beans with very little active supervision while keeping the cooking process consistent and efficient. Rajma can often be unpredictable, but the Instant Pot makes it far easier to manage on busy days without losing the comforting texture and flavour that make the dish special.

I also think many people get intimidated by the appliance because they assume they must always wait for the pressure to release naturally. But that is part of the convenience of the Instant Pot. Once the buzzer goes off, you can carefully release the steam manually and move straight to the next stage of cooking.

As someone balancing work, writing, research, and everyday life, I genuinely find that practicality appealing.

I do not see the Instant Pot as a replacement for traditional cooking. I see it as another chapter in the long history of Indian kitchens adapting intelligently to changing lives.

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CONCLUSION

Comparison of cooking methods at a glance

Though Lisa, Harshita and I set out to compare cooking methods, we reached an interesting conclusion. That we would almost certainly stick to our preferred methods of cooking. I will continue to use my dear PCs for all legumes. But what I will do differently next time is cook rajma with Jammu or chitra rajma.

Secondly, the final dish is a result of not only the cooking method, but also soaking time, the type of rajma used, cooking time and the age of the bean. Here’s the template I will follow - chitra rajma, soaking time 12 hours, cook in a PC with high heat, spices, onions and tomatoes. And then reduce the heat to low and cook for another 30 minutes.

If you prefer Instant Pot or stovetop/oven cooking, follow Harshita’s and Lisa’s recipe.

Irrespective of the method, you will be rewarded with comfort and siesta-inducing rajma.

Meanwhile enjoy Lisa’s science corner and deep dive into kidney beans.

Culinary Repertoire

Kidney Bean Science Corner

This post takes a closer look at kidney beans, from its nutritional and functional compounds to its place in the kitchen. Science Corner is where I bring together evidence, traditional knowledge, and…

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4 months ago · 29 likes · 18 comments · Lisa McLean

Culinary Repertoire

How to Prepare Kidney Beans Safely and Well

This Science Corner companion post looks closely at the preparation of kidney beans: why they must be cooked properly, what soaking does, how heat changes the bean from within, and why different cook…

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4 months ago · 9 likes · 3 comments · Lisa McLean

As you all know, I hail from the western Indian state of Maharashtra. But North Indian staples palak paneer, chhole and rajma have become a part of my cooking routine.

Rajma is a kidney bean stew that reminds my North Indian/Punjabi friends of home, family meals and mom’s food and the deadliest of all - their grandmom’s food. (I call it deadliest because nothing anyone cooks can EVER come close to what their grandmom cooked). Rajma-chawal (chawal means rice) is a match made in heaven and invokes the same passion in my friends that Dal Chawal conjures in me.

This post is driven by a collaboration between , and me. We are trying to solve the burning question - Which cooking technique is the best for rajma (please note the dried kidney bean is also called rajma and the cooked stew is also called the same)? Now this question is moot if canned beans are used (read my eons-old article about a comparative study between cooking with dried beans versus canned beans)

The joint post coming out soon will detail our findings about our respective cooking techniques and why we are partial to it over the others.

Epicurean Dispatch - My Spicy journal

The Rise of Kidney Beans in India: Rajma-Chawal

Welcome…

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4 months ago · 25 likes · 8 comments · Harshita saxena

Culinary Repertoire

Kidney Bean Science Corner

This post takes a closer look at kidney beans, from its nutritional and functional compounds to its place in the kitchen. Science Corner is where I bring together evidence, traditional knowledge, and the everyday practice of cooking. My perspective is shaped by a life spent between clinic work, research, and the stove, and I hope to make these ideas cle…

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4 months ago · 28 likes · 18 comments · Lisa McLean

RECIPE - RAJMA

Adapted from recipe by Chef Sanjyot Keer, Your Food Lab on YouTube

As we read in ’s post, kidney beans are not native to India. But still, we have a wide variety of kidney beans - chitra, jammu, lal, pahadi and many more. I have been using lal or red kidney beans. Read ’s Science Corner post to find out the nutritional ins and outs of a kidney bean.

Traditionally rajma is prepared in Indian kitchens by pressure cooking soaked kidney beans and then boiling them with bhuna masala (tempered and cooked down onions, tomatoes and spices). Chef Keer’s recipe cuts short the dual steps to a single step - pressure cook all the spices, seasonings, onions and tomatoes along with soaked kidney beans. Along with some other tweaks, the tadka on the top is my adaptation because without tadka, what is life?

Canned beans come in handy if you are following the dual step process as they take care of the first step for you.

Ingredients

• 1 cup red kidney beans, about 207 grams

• 1 medium red onion, peeled and cut into big pieces (I got 16 chunks), 1.5” x 1.5”

• 3 medium tomatoes cut into two pieces each

• 2 thai chile peppers, destemmed

• 2 big garlic cloves peeled

• 1 inch knob of ginger peeled and grated

• 1 piece of cinnamon 1” long

• 1 black cardamom

• 1 bay leaf

• 3/4 teaspoon cumin seeds divided

• 1/2 teaspoon turmeric

• 1/2 teaspoon red chile powder

• 1 teaspoon ground coriander

• 1/2 teaspoon garam masala & a pinch

• 1/2 teaspoon ghee

• 1 teaspoon salt

• 1 pinch asafetida

• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil

• Chopped cilantro for garnish

For pickled onions

• 1 small red onion peeled and sliced in thin half-moons

• 1 pinch salt

• 1 pinch cumin powder

• 1/2 teaspoon lime juice

Serves 2-3

Method

• Wash 1 cup kidney beans vigorously in a large mixing bowl full of water. Discard the water. Now soak the beans in 4 cups water.

• After about 4 hours, discard the soaked water and refresh the water.

• Soak them for 8-10 hours or overnight.

• Discard the soaking water and wash the beans under running water. Beans have fluffed up to about 2.5 cups.

  

• Pour the beans in a pressure cooker. Add 1 chopped red onion, 3 cut tomatoes, 2 thai chile peppers sliced length-wise, 2 garlic cloves, grated ginger, 1 piece of cinnamon, 1 black cardamom, 1 bay leaf, 1/2 teaspoon cumin seeds, 1/2 teaspoon turmeric, 1/2 teaspoon red chile powder, 1 teaspoon ground coriander, 1/2 teaspoon garam masala, 1 pinch asafetida, 1/2 teaspoon ghee, 1 teaspoon salt and 3 cups water. Please note the quantity of water added to the PC is three times that of dried rajma. I liked Chef Keer’s recipe because the proportion of water ensures that the sauce’s consistency in the final dish is very close to perfect and allows for preferential adjustments.

• Cover the pressure cooker with the lid and the pressure or whistle. Turn the heat to high.

• After the pressure cooker reaches maximum pressure and releases pressure (I’m dying to say whistles out here because Indians exchange recipes in number of whistles), turn the heat to low.

• Let the pressure cooker cook for 30 minutes. Turn the heat off and allow the pressure cooker to cool down. This low-heat-maintain-the-pressure method of cooking ensures the beans get cooked to the point of breaking down.

• Open the lid and try to fish out the bay leaf, cinnamon and black cardamom. With a pair of tongs, extract the skin of the tomatoes as much as possible. Set it aside.

• Heat a small pot on medium heat and pour 2 tablespoons oil in it.

• After 2 minutes, the oil will start shimmering. add 1/4 teaspoon cumin seeds.

• Once the cumin seeds stop sizzling, pour the tadka into the rajma.

• Now heat the cooker on medium heat without the lid. Stir the rajma and while stirring crush the pieces of onions and tomatoes with the back of a serving spoon.

• Add a pinch of garam masala.

• Adjust the consistency of the sauce as per your preference. If you want a thicker sauce, crush the beans as you stir. If you want a loose sauce, add hot water.

• Cook the rajma for about 15 minutes. You will see the whole dish coming together as the sauce thickens and becomes organic with the beans.

• Garnish with chopped cilantro.

• Serve hot with rice and a side of pickled onions.

• Here’s a quick recipe of pickled onions.

• Slice 1 onion in fine half-moons and place them in a bowl. Add a pinch of salt, ground cumin and red chile powder and 1/2 teaspoon lime juice. Now massage the onions vigorously to separate the layers of the half-moons into thin strands. Let the onions marinate and rest for 15-30 minutes.

• Serve rajma chawal for lunch only if you have time for a siesta.

In the next post, we go back to chutneys. I have chosen two chutneys from the book “Chutney” and will tell you about the states they hail from and their creators. We will talk about how you can incorporate them in your everyday meals too. Fun, fun, fun!

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Today’s love story is green mango. One ingredient, two unique recipes in a cookoff where both Lisa and I win because we learned something new. But I am hoping that the biggest winner in this cookoff is YOU!

In line with Lisa’s lifelong love for everything Sri Lanka, she shares a Sri Lankan Green Mango curry, a curry where the bright, supremely tangy and seemingly irreverent green mango surrenders itself to heat and spices and becomes a silky smooth, sour and sweet curry.

While I bring Chitranna to the table, a sublime green mango rice, which my mother cooks for me, every time I am in India. First let me tell you how green mangoes make Indian cooks a little cuckoo.

Now you know that mango’s connection to South Asia is tight, but do you know about the oversized presence of green mangoes in these kitchens?

As I was growing up, come April, the air was ripe with a delicious sense of excitement and expectation, not only because summer vacation was starting but because life was going to become, well, mangoes!

We ate the ripe, supremely aromatic, nectar-like sweet mangoes in and as a variety of dishes - hand-extracted mango pulp aka aam ras, mango milk shake, mango lassi, mango ice cream, mango fudge, mango leather and of course, cut-up mangoes.

But green mango, available for a short summer season, had moms and entire IAPF buzzing around like bees, with a feral intensity to turn them, into anything and everything. Even thinking about all the culinary possibilities with a green mango produces waves of excitement in me.

The absolute first thing we did with green mangoes was to cut them in chunks and dip them in a mix of one part salt and half part red chile powder. Eating these sour, hot, salty treats with friends and blabbering endlessly about nothing which was everything at that age is childhood for me.

Afternoons were reserved for aam panha or aam ki shikanji. This tangy, sweet green mango drink is super refreshing for hot, humid tropical weather.

Meals took a playful turn with dishes like green mango (called kairi in my mother tongue, Marathi) chutney, lunji (mango relish), mango pickle.

My favorite though is an easy rice dish, which has the potential to become a part of your weekly cooking routine.

RECIPE - CHITRANNA, TANGY GREEN MANGO RICE

Chitranna, is a green mango rice, a pilaf kind of dish that needs no accompaniment. Plain cooked white rice is seasoned with grated and peeled green mango, spices. But the final dish comes together with a mighty tadka of neutral oil, black mustard seeds with curry leaves, peanuts, dry whole red chile pepper and roasted split chickpeas. For me this dish also highlights a unique technique – that of cooking the mango without cooking it explicitly. Grated green mango nestles between two layers of steaming hot white rice for a few minutes releasing its tangy flavor.

Choose a green mango that is firm and hard – they tend to be tangy with a white flesh. I have been tricked into mangoes that feel rock hard but are yellow and not quite tangy but sweetish inside. Not to worry, introduce acidity with a teaspoon or two of lime juice.

Ingredients

• 1 cup cooked steaming hot basmati rice

• ½ cup peeled and grated green mango

• ½ teaspoon ground coriander

• ¼ teaspoon red chile powder

• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil

• 1/8 cup unroasted, unsalted peanuts

• ¼ teaspoon black mustard seeds

• 1 pinch asafetida

• 2 dry whole red chile peppers

• 1/8 cup daliya

• 8-10 curry leaves

• 1 teaspoon salt

• Chopped cilantro for garnish

Serves 2

Method

• Take half the rice in a mixing bowl. Spread the grated green mango onto the rice along with ½ teaspoon ground coriander and ¼ teaspoon red chile powder and layer the rest of the rice on top. Leave them alone for 10 minutes to mingle and dance with each other.

• By the time you finish the next steps, 10 minutes would be over.

• Pour 2 tablespoons vegetable oil in a skillet or a tadka pot. Turn the heat to medium and let the oil heat up for 2 minutes. Once the oil starts shimmering, add 1/8 teaspoon raw peanuts and let them roast. But keep stirring them to prevent them from burning. We want the peanuts to become darker than golden brown. If you hurry this step, they get stuck in your teeth while chewing and there are few things more annoying.

• Turn the heat to low and carefully fish out the peanuts on top of the rice and green mango.

• Add ¼ teaspoon black mustard seeds to the oil and let them sizzle and pop.

• Once the sizzling stops, add asafetida, 2 dry red chile peppers, 8-10 curry leaves and 1/8 cup daliya. Let the peppers darken and the daliya become coffee brown.

• Turn the heat off and pour this tadka on the rice. Add 1 teaspoon salt and mix everything well.

• Garnish with cilantro. Enjoy this rice at room temperature too. It will easily last for two days in the fridge. Heat it in a microwave or on stove. It does not need to be piping hot.

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RECIPE - SRI LANKAN GREEN MANGO CURRY

By © Lisa McLean for Culinary Repertoire

This curry works best with firm, sour, unripe mangoes. The pieces should soften during cooking, but still hold enough shape to give the dish texture and presence. Serve it warm or at room temperature with rice, dal, coconut sambol, fish curry, prawns, or a simple vegetable thoran.

Ingredients

• 4 tablespoons coconut oil

• 1 large onion, thinly sliced

• A generous handful of fresh curry leave

• 3 to 4 cardamom pods, lightly bruised

• 1 teaspoon mustard seeds

• ¼ teaspoon turmeric

• 2 teaspoons chilli powder, or to taste

• ½ teaspoon chilli flakes

• ½ cup jaggery or sugar, adjusted to taste

• 4 firm green mangoes

• 1 to 2 cups water, as needed

• Salt, to taste

Serves 5-6

Method

• Prepare the mangoes first. Use a sturdy knife or cleaver and take care, as green mangoes can be hard and resistant. Cut each mango into large pieces, keeping the pieces substantial enough to hold their shape during cooking. Peel away any tough skin if needed, and remove any fibrous seed material that may bring bitterness. Rinse the mango pieces and set them aside.

• Warm the coconut oil in a wide pan over medium heat. Add the sliced onion, curry leaves and bruised cardamom pods. Cook gently until the onion softens and begins to take on a golden colour.

• Add the mustard seeds, turmeric, chilli powder and chilli flakes. Stir them through the onion and oil, letting the spices bloom briefly without scorching.

• Add the prepared mango pieces and turn them through the spiced oil for a couple of minutes, so they are well coated with the onion, curry leaves and spices.

• Add 1 cup of water, the jaggery or sugar, and a little salt. Bring the curry to a steady simmer, then cover the pan and cook for about 25 to 35 minutes, or until the mangoes are tender and the sauce has thickened.

• Check the curry as it cooks. If the mangoes are still firm and the liquid is reducing too quickly, add a little more water. You want enough liquid for the mangoes to soften, but not so much that the final curry is thin.

• When the mangoes are tender, taste the sauce. Adjust the salt, chilli and sweetness until the balance feels right. The curry should be sour, sweet, hot and savoury, with the mango still clearly present.

• Simmer uncovered for a few more minutes if needed, until the sauce thickens and clings to the mango pieces.

• Remove from the heat and let the curry rest before serving. It is beautiful warm, but even better once it has had time to settle. Store leftovers in the fridge to enjoy a day or two later.

Serving suggestions

This green mango curry is wonderful with plain rice and a simple dal. It also belongs naturally on a Sri Lankan table with coconut sambol, mallung, fish curry, chicken curry, or tempered vegetables.

I particularly like it with seafood. The sourness of the mango works beautifully beside prawns or fish, especially when there is coconut, chilli and rice nearby to soften the edges. It can also be served as one of the bright, sharp dishes in a larger curry meal. A little goes a long way, but people tend to come back for more.

Sri Lankan Green Mango Curry

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One post of Culinary Repertoire may take you to the hallowed land of Marcella Hazan’s recipes, another to the spicy culinary terrain of Sri Lanka and yet another to the mouth-refreshing world of kimchi. Not to forget the cerebral Science Corner!

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Chitranna

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Do let us know what you thought of this tangy, spicy, sweet, savory collaborative post.

This post is my way of letting the universe know, an FYI! Now coming back to earth!

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Indian breads are unfathomably versatile. Every state has a baffling range. You may know naan, roti, paratha but have you heard of bati, litti, surnoli, bhakri, appams or appe? With ingredients ranging from whole wheat flour, all-purpose flour to millet, rice flours and lentils, there are unleavened flatbreads like rotis and parathas to leavened crunchy dosas or appams to silky soft lentil pancakes. Some are crunchy on the outside, soft and chewy on the inside, while some are borderline burnt at the edges, tangy, spicy, hot even sweet. The variety is magical!

Jump to Spiced Puri recipe

Let’s take a quick look at a few of them though each one of them deserves a separate post -

Roti

The everyday unleavened whole wheat flatbread, that accompanies sabjis, curries, dal and pretty much anything. I have heard from IAPF (Indian Aunties Police Force) that a roti should be so soft that lips should be able to tear a piece. Well, that’s a hugely tall order inviting a confluence of skill honed over lifetimes, precision, attention and good quality, unadulterated flour. Cooking techniques differ too. My mother laminates (folds and applies oil) during the rolling process and puffs up the roti on the skillet. My MIL rolls the roti without folding and puffs it up - a rather difficult task because it’s a masterful game of managing the skillet temperature.

Paratha

North India’s unleavened whole wheat flatbread is roasted on the skillet with ghee or oil creating beautiful, brown patches. Generous the hand of ghee, bigger the patches, leading to a nod and wordless acknowledgement from the IAPF. Parathas are also stuffed with spiced, mashed boiled potatoes, grated paneer, radishes, cabbage and cauliflower encased in whole wheat flour dough. For leafy greens, the technique changes. Diced spinach or fenugreek leaves are integrated into the flour with spices for a green-flecked dough. Then parathas are rolled and roasted.

On a cute side note, old Delhi has “Parathewali Gali” (in Hindi it means lane of parathas), an entire street lined with shops selling the most divine parathas.

Puri

It is a deep-fried, puffy, pillowy-soft Indian bread four to five inches in diameter. Crispy on the outside and soft and fluffy on the inside, puris are the little black dress of Indian breads. Fitting into a little black dress may take some work, but once you wear it, you shine. Similarly, puris pair immaculately with spicy, savory, saucy, dry sabjis, chutneys, pickles and even desserts.

Tear a piece of puri and dip into tariwale aloo (saucy potatoes) to experience a bite of perfection. Or scoop dry potato sabji with puri and there is no need for silverware for this quintessential train food. Now, this might come as a shock to some but numerous Indian desserts such as kheer, shrikhand, halwa, basundi, aam ras (mango pulp extracted at home) are enjoyed as a main course, in conjunction with puris. Kheer-puri, shrikhand-puri, halwa-puri, basundi-puri and aam ras puri are classic and traditional festive or special occasion combinations.

Puris do not require an oven, and they scale up easily for numbers, travel beautifully, last for days and pair beautifully with pickles, sabjis dry or saucy and desserts. So, tell me, why is Naan more popular?

Naan

Well, naan is another one of my pet peeves like chai. Why would one say naan bread when it translates to bread, bread? Please don’t do it. Just say naan.

Naan is leavened bread and like butter chicken, often equated with Indian cuisine in the West. Why? I don’t know. Traditionally roasted in the special clay oven called tandoor, naan is extremely easy to love.

Kulcha

Leavened and hailing from North India, kulcha is softer than naan and also available stuffed (with mashed, spiced potatoes, onions). Rich, flaky, crunchy on the outside and velvety soft on the inside, do eat kulchas at Kesar da Dhaba if you happen to be in Amritsar, Punjab.

Bhakri

Farmer food of my home state, bhakri is a rustic sorghum or millet bread. Traditionally farmer food, bhakri has now become a darling of the Indian wellness movement. Please see the video of my aunt preparing bhakri. It’s hard!

Today’s recipe is a hot and spicy puri, a bread common in Maharashtrian kitchens.

RECIPE – TIKHAT MITHACHI PURI (SPICED PURIS)

This is Puri on steroids. Amped up with spices, salt and red chile powder and paired with a chutney or a pickle, this puri is a delightful weekend breakfast or a brunch fit for guests. It pairs superb with chai or coffee two days later too.

Tikhat Mithachi Puri (“Tikhat” means red chile powder and “mith” means salt in my mother tongue, Marathi) along with saucy potatoes with a side of pickle or chutney was a weekend meal in my parents’ home when I was growing up. I love to eat this puri with plain yogurt too. Just tear a piece of puri and scoop up the salted yogurt and you experience the bliss of balanced flavors.

Ingredients

For the dough

• 1 ½ cups whole wheat flour

• ¾ cup chickpea flour or besan

• 1 teaspoon red chile powder

• 1 ¼ teaspoon salt

• 1 pinch asafetida

• 1 teaspoon ground coriander

• 1 teaspoon ground cumin

• ½ teaspoon turmeric

• ½ teaspoon cumin seeds

• ¼ cup plain yogurt

• ½ cup water

• 2 teaspoons vegetable oil

• 2-3 teaspoons whole wheat flour for dusting

For frying

• 1 cup vegetable oil

Makes 25 Puris

Method

• Combine 1 ½ cups whole wheat flour and ¾ cup chickpea flour in a mixing bowl.

• Add 1 teaspoon red chile powder, 1 ¼ salt, 1 pinch asafetida, 1 teaspoon ground coriander, 1 teaspoon ground cumin, ½ teaspoon turmeric, ½ teaspoon cumin seeds. Mix well.

• Taste the dry, spiced flour mix and adjust seasoning (salt or red chile powder) as per preference. My family loves these puris hot and spicy. At this stage I increase red chile powder by a teaspoon.

• Now pour in ¼ cup plain yogurt and ½ cup water. Knead into a dough. It should be somewhere between a stiff, tough dough and a shaggy one. You will find sticky bits stuck to your palms and that is okay. It will be fine once the dough rests.

• Pour 1 teaspoon oil over the dough and incorporate in the dough.

• Let the dough rest for at least 30 minutes. 1 hour is fine too.

• Sprinkle a teaspoon of whole wheat flour on the dough and knead it with another teaspoon oil. As you knead, you will see the dough losing its cragginess and become smooth.

• Divide the dough into three portions and lay one portion on your rolling surface. Most Indian kitchens will have this contraption (first image from L to R), at least the ones in North and Western India who eat flatbreads.

• Elongate one portion into a sausage like log. Now cut this log into 7-8 blobs cross-sectionally. Each blob should be about an inch to inch and half thick. You can tear each blob from the log or cut it with knife.

• Do the same for the other 3 portions and carve out blobs. I got 25 of them.

• Take a blob on one palm and with the palm of another hand, smoothen it into a round and then flatten it. Do the same for all the blobs.

• Dust a blob with some whole wheat flour to facilitate rolling.

• Now with a rolling pin, roll the blob into a puri about 4” in diameter. And lay it on a sheet pan. Do the same for all the blobs, make sure you place the rolled puris on a sheet pan with minimal overlap.

• Heat 1 cup vegetable oil in a wok or kadhai on medium-high heat. The beauty of kadhai is its U shape with sloping sides so that the contents pool at the bottom and get exposed to maximum heat. In Indian kitchens, kadhais are all purpose. They are used for stir-frying, roasting, dry-roasting, deep-frying, braising – basically kadhai can get every kitchen process done.

• You will be hard pressed to find an Indian home cook use a kitchen thermometer. The intuitive technique employed goes this way. Heat the oil for 2-3 minutes and drop a tiny piece of dough into the oil. If it floats up right away after hitting the bottom, the oil is ready for deep-frying. I measured the temperature after performing this home-grown test and it was 375 degrees F and rising.

• Once the oil is hot, gently insert the rolled puri into the oil vertically. Do not drop it flat or you will be at the end of hot oil splashes.

• The puri will fall to the bottom of the kadhai and as soon as it rises to the top, lightly press it with a slotted spoon which will spur the puri to puff up.

• Flip it on the other side with the slotted spoon once you see small brown patches appearing on the top surface. Let the brown patches appear on the other side too.

• Now fish the puri out of the oil with the slotted spoon but not out of the kadhai. Tip the spoon on the side with the puri trapped between the spoon and wall of the kadhai for 2-3 seconds. This will drain the excess oil from the puri back into the kadhai.

• Take the puri out into a plate lined with paper napkin to absorb the oil.

• Serve the puris hot with a pickle, dahi or a quick chutney of plain yogurt and crushed Calabrian chile peppers garnished with chopped cilantro.

  

  I hope you’ve enjoyed our first foray into Indian breads.

In the next post, I introduce you to a dearest friend. We have been an active part of each other’s life since kindergarten. And her recipe for brown lentils that involves a special cooking technique called “Vaatan.”

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Here’s in her own words -

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Annada and I have never been in the same room. We found each other on Substack — her newsletter teaching Indian flavors for real weekday cooking, mine making the case that Ayurveda belongs in every kitchen, not just Indian ones. We read each other's work. At some point one of us said we should collaborate. The way you do, meaning it but not quite getting there.

Then we compared notes and discovered we'd both been circling the same subject independently: warm salads. Different recipes, different reasoning, same instinct. It seemed like more than coincidence. So here we are.

This is that post. Annada brings the recipes and the flavor knowledge. I bring the Ayurvedic framework for why warm food in cold weather isn't just delicious — it's intelligent. Between us, we're hoping to change the way you think about what a salad can be.

What Ayurveda thinks about salads

Let's start with what Ayurveda is not saying. It is not anti-salad. It is not telling you to give up your greens or surrender the freshness and variety that a good salad brings to the table. What it is saying is more interesting than that.

Ayurveda is anti-default.

At the center of all Ayurvedic thinking about food is one concept: agni — digestive fire. The word is Sanskrit for fire, but its meaning goes deeper than the mechanics of digestion. Agni is the force that transforms what you eat into actual nourishment. Not just the mechanical breakdown of food, but the whole intelligent process of digestion, absorption, and assimilation. The Charaka Samhita, the foundational Ayurvedic text, is unambiguous: when agni functions well, all tissues are nourished and vitality is maintained. When agni is impaired, undigested matter accumulates — what Ayurveda calls ama, the residue of incomplete digestion. Ama, over time, is considered the root condition underlying most illness.

Everything in Ayurvedic nutrition is organized around one question: does this support agni, or does it suppress it?

Cold suppresses fire. This is thermodynamics before it is philosophy. The body encountering cold food must first bring it up to working temperature before it can begin the actual work of digestion. That expenditure of energy happens before a single nutrient has been absorbed. Raw food asks something additional — its cellular walls are intact, its fiber unbroken, and it requires significantly more digestive effort than food that heat has already begun to transform. Cooking is not the destruction of food. In Ayurvedic terms it is the first stage of digestion — the transformation that happens before the food ever enters your body.

The timing of this post is not accidental. Spring in Ayurveda — Vasanta Ritu — is kapha season. The heaviness that accumulated over winter begins to loosen and move, and the body is in the middle of its own natural clearing process. But spring is also precisely when digestive fire tends to run lowest. The cold raw salad, chosen for its lightness and virtue, can be exactly wrong for a body that is already sluggish and trying to process the accumulated weight of winter. Warm food, lightly cooked, built on ingredients that are easy to transform — that is what the season is actually asking for.

This is also where spices become something more than flavor. Mustard seeds bloomed in hot oil. Asafetida — one of Ayurveda's great digestive spices, used specifically to ease the bloating that raw cabbage or beans can cause. Turmeric. Coriander. Ginger. These are not seasonings with incidental health benefits. They are specific kindlers of agni, tools for warming and activating the digestive process. When they are woven into a warm salad — bloomed in the dressing oil, toasted and scattered on top — the dish comes with its own digestive support built in. The food and its medicine are the same thing.

What I find most beautiful about the recipes Annada is sharing is that she didn't set out to cook Ayurvedically. She set out to cook the way her kitchen taught her. But look at what Sambhaaro does — mustard seeds bloomed in oil, asafetida, turmeric, coriander, cabbage cooked but not surrendered. And the sprouted mung bean salad: mung beans are among the most digestible legumes in the Ayurvedic canon and sprouting them begins the transformation that cooking continues. Both dishes are warm, spiced, and exactly right for the season.

Every great food culture has figured out the same things independently. Ayurveda simply gives it a framework. A warm salad in spring is not a compromise. It is, in the most precise Ayurvedic sense, the right tool for the moment.

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And here’s me -

Warm salads, you say? Is that an oxymoron? Do you actually cook the salad to make it warm? Why would you want to cook the salad? Why would you not cook the salad, especially on a blustery day, in the cold season?

I bet all these thoughts are going through your mind right now.

Warm salad is a legit salad in Indian food. It can also be called a stir-fry, side dish or even a dry sabji. The confusion is real. One reason is because Indian food is not served in courses, everything is served together, family style. So a salad, be it warm or cold, becomes a side dish anyway because the entree will be either a cooked vegetable and dal or a meat dish. In my mother’s kitchen, a typical weekday’s menu could contain roti, a saucy sabji, a warm salad, dal and rice.

Salads is not something that comes to mind when Indian food is mentioned. Contrary to impressions though, Indian salad is a firm background presence. It can be a crunchy side kick, a palate changing contrast to a meaty dish or a cool foil against a whooping hot entree. Indian salads can be divided into oil-free salads, yogurt-based salads (raitas) and warm salads. And as is often the case with India, all the above varieties sidle, intersect and overlap.

Lightly cooked warm salad, called Sambhaaro, is customary in the western state of Gujarat. Shredded cabbage, grated carrots or raw papaya are sautéed in turmeric-spiked tadka just enough till they lose their raw edge. An optional squeeze of lime and garnish of cilantro complete the dish.

A warm salad also works as a standalone snack or a light lunch.

RECIPE - WARM CABBAGE SALAD SEASONED WITH TOMATOES

Sambhaaro is stir-fry in spirit because of its nifty preparation technique - cooking just enough to dispel the raw edge of cabbage. It invokes the salad vibe because the cabbage is crunchy. It reminds you of an Indian curry because of ground coriander and red chili powder. While ticking so many boxes, Sambhaaro can be served as a side dish, a salad, a soup/stew topping or a taco stuffing.

Serving size – for 2 people; Prep time – 10 minutes, cooking time – 10 minutes

Ingredients

• 1 tablespoon vegetable oil

• 1/4 teaspoon black mustard seeds

• ¼ teaspoon cumin seeds

• 1 Thai chile pepper chopped into two pieces lengthwise or crosswise (optional)

• 1/8 teaspoon asafetida

• ¼ teaspoon turmeric powder

• 2 cups chopped cabbage

• 1/2 teaspoon salt

• 1/2 teaspoon ground coriander

• ¼ teaspoon Kashmiri red chili powder

• ½ cup chopped tomatoes or 1 medium Roma tomato chopped (preferably juicy and ripe ones)

• ¼ cup chopped cilantro for garnish (optional)

• 1/2 teaspoon lime juice (optional)

Directions

• Pour 1 tablespoon vegetable oil into a sauté pan and turn the heat to high.

• After 2 minutes, add ¼ teaspoon black mustard seeds and let them sizzle.

• Once the sizzling and popping stops, add ¼ teaspoon cumin seeds, chile pepper pieces and stir. Make sure the pepper skin turns pale green.

• Reduce the heat to medium and combine in 1/8 teaspoon asafetida, and 1/4 teaspoon turmeric powder.

• Tip in the cabbage and follow up with 1/2 teaspoon salt. Stir well.

• After a minute or so drop 1/2 teaspoon ground coriander and ¼ teaspoon red chile powder. Stir well and cook for 2 minutes.

• Add chopped tomatoes. Mix well and turn the heat off and cover for 5 minutes. As the cabbage salad cools down, the tomatoes will break down ever so slightly and accent the salad with tangy juices. The flavor this juice imparts is my favorite part of Sambhaaro. Choose a ripe tomato so it can surrender its juices with even a tad bit of heat.

• Garnish with cilantro. End with a squeeze of lime if you want the pop of acidity.

RECIPE - WARM SPROUTED MUNG BEAN SALAD

For me this salad is lunch. Topped with diced tomatoes (and onions if you prefer), garnished with cilantro and amped with Indian crunchies aka namkeen or mixture (snacky, crunchy deep-fried mixes of sev, fried lentils, roasted peanuts, boondi and/or puffed rice), the texture contrast itself makes this meal super satiating.

Serving size – for 1 person

Prep time – 10 minutes, cooking time – 10 minutes

Ingredients

• ½ tablespoon vegetable oil

• 1/8 teaspoon black mustard seeds

• 1/8 teaspoon cumin seeds

• a pinch of asafetida

• 1/8 teaspoon turmeric powder

• ¼ teaspoon Kashmiri red chili powder

• 1 cup sprouted or soaked mung beans #

• 1/2 teaspoon salt

• ¼ teaspoon amchur

• ½ tomato diced for topping

• 1/2 of a small red onion diced for topping

• ½ cup Bombay mix

• ¼ cup chopped cilantro for garnish (optional)

#Here’s how I sprout mung beans -

For a yield of 1 cup of sprouted beans, soak ¼ cup whole green mung beans in 2 cups water overnight or for at least 6 hours. Drain the water from soaked beans. Spread the beans on a flat plate and pick out hard, unsoaked beans and discard. Place the soaked beans in a wet cheese cloth (or any thin cloth or kitchen towel), bring the ends together and twist the ends into a loose knot. Place this bundle, with the twisted end facing down, in a colander and place the colander in another pot or a tray. Store in a corner on the counter. Check every few hours to ensure that the cheese cloth is moist. Sprinkle water on the cheese cloth if not moist. Warm weather will hasten the sprouting and after 24 hours you will have robust sprouts, 1/4” to 1/2” long. In winter the same may take 48 or 72 hours. Store them in an airtight container in the refrigerator and they will last for about a week. As Geetika says, with sprouting, you have already started the cooking transformation.

Directions

• Pour ½ tablespoon vegetable oil into a sauté pan and turn the heat to high.

• After 2 minutes, add 1/8 teaspoon black mustard seeds and let them sizzle.

• Once the sizzling and popping stops, add 1/8 teaspoon cumin seeds.

• Reduce the heat to low and mix in a pinch of asafetida, 1/8 teaspoon turmeric powder and ¼ teaspoon red chile powder.

• Add the 1 cup sprouted mung beans right away to prevent the chile pepper powder from burning.

• Mix in 1/2 teaspoon salt, ¼ teaspoon amchur powder.

• Stir well and after a minute or so add 3 tablespoons water and cover.

• Stir once in between and turn the heat off after 10 minutes.

• Now plate the salad starting with the cooked mung beans, followed by diced onions, tomatoes.

• Top with the snacky crunchies (recommendations below), garnish with cilantro.

• Eat right away. The crunchies will become soggy if you delay eating, we don’t want that.

  

SHOPPING LIST

1. Hot Mix - This is my favorite snack mix. An anytime, all time snack, Hot Mix is perfect with chai or coffee.

2. Or you will find the whole aisle in Asian/Indian grocery stores. Go wild!

Geetika and I hope that you will be inspired to make these salads and add some ayurvedic warmth to your meals. Experiment along the way with vegetables like shredded carrots, green papaya, diced mushrooms, broccoli, zucchini and roasted root vegetables.

For example, what is dal? Is it a curry (a big NO), is it a soup, is it a stew? Dal or any cooked, spiced lentils are a category in itself because they are such a monumental part of Indian meals, notwithstanding the culinary diversity. The best way to describe and categorize dal is as a rice accompaniment. In the western Indian states of Maharashtra and Gujarat, warm, stir-fried salads are intrinsic parts of meals. But they are cited as side dishes or even dried sabjis, no one will dream of calling them salads.

I like to refer to them as warm salads because shredded cabbage, green papaya, grated carrots and sprouted mung beans are stir-fried just enough to get rid of the raw, grassy taste while it is crucial for the texture to remain crunchy.

Today’s post features a similar unclassifiable dish and a meal I had at my sister-in-law, Veena’s house. The meal has stayed in my memory and has become a part of my cooking routine. It has three dishes, which form a flawless trifecta. And I wanted to feature this meal in a post because of two reasons, one is because I tasted a spice for the first time. Secondly because this meal contains kadhi, a soupy rice accompaniment that is hard to classify -

Vegetable Pulao, a spiced rice seasoned with carrots, green beans, and onions

Tomato Chutney with nigella seeds - She served this chutney with pulao and kadhi. Nigella seeds are the star of this chutney. These black seeds not only ornament the vermilion landscape of this chutney but also infuse it with an aromatic flavor leaving a pleasant aftertaste. I tasted nigella seeds for the first time and was so pleasantly taken by their lingering, oniony flavor that now I use them copiously in vinaigrettes, tadkas and parathas. This chutney complements any bread, leavened or unleavened, too.

Kadhi - Popular in northern and western India, this is a soupy, stewy dish with chickpea flour thickened yogurt as its main component. Defying precise classification, kadhi falls on the same spectrum as dal. Kadhi tastes mind blowing good with white rice, khichdi or spiced and seasoned rice like Pulao. In a typical north Indian kadhi, chickpea flour pakodas swim in the kadhi - like dumplings soup - while western India makes plain kadhi.

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RECIPES - Vegetable Pulao

A Vegetable Pulao is a one-pot rice and vegetable dish. Perfect for weeknights, the pulao-centric meal will come together in 30-40 minutes, if you have the chutney made on a weekend.

Ingredients

• 1.5 cups basmati or long grain rice

• 2 tablespoons ghee or vegetable/coconut oil (if vegan)

• 1/4 teaspoon cumin seeds

• 1/8 teaspoon black mustard seeds

• 3-4 black peppercorns

• 2-3 green cardamoms

• 2 bay leaves

• 3-4 cloves

• 1 teaspoon grated ginger

• 1 thai chile pepper thinly sliced

• 1.5 cups thinly sliced red onions cut into half-moons

• 1 cup carrots peeled and diced into quarter moons

• 1 cup green beans diced lengthwise into 1/2” pieces

• 1/2 cup green bell peppers diced into thin slivers, 1” long

• 1 cup cauliflower florets, 1” x 1”

• 1 cup potatoes diced into cubes

• 1 teaspoon salt

Serves 3-4

Method

• Pour the rice in a mixing bowl and wash it under running water till the water runs clear, drain and set aside. Soak in 2 cups water for 10-15 minutes. 30 minutes would be the best.

• Heat 2 teaspoons ghee or oil in a thick-bottomed pot (which has a lid) on medium heat.

• After waiting for the oil to heat up and shimmer, add 1/4 teaspoon cumin seeds, 1/8 teaspoon black mustard seeds, 3-4 black peppercorns, 2-3 green cardamom, 2 bay leaves and 3-4 cloves.

• Once the seeds stop sizzling, follow up with 1.5 cups sliced onions. Sauté till the onions become translucent, about 4-5 minutes.

• Add 1 cup carrots, 1 cup green beans and 1/2 cup green bell pepper, 1 cup cauliflower florets and 1 cup potatoes. Add 1 teaspoon salt. Cover with a lid and stir to prevent the vegetables from sticking. Cook the vegetables like this with a cover for 5-6 minutes.

  

• Discard the water from the soaked rice and add rice to the pot with vegetables. Add 3.5 cups water and turn the heat to medium high. The water will evaporate in 10 minutes.

• Cover and cook on low heat for about 5 minutes. Keep an eye on pulao and test if it is done by squeezing one grain of rice between your fingers. If the grain gets squished easily, pulao is done. Let the pulao rest and settle for 5-10 minutes before serving.

• Serve hot with tomato chutney and steaming kadhi.

RECIPES - Tomato Chutney with Nigella Seeds

Ingredients

• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil

• 1/4 teaspoon black mustard seeds

• 1/4 teaspoon cumin seeds

• 1 teaspoon nigella seeds

• ½ teaspoon turmeric

• 8-10 curry leaves

• 1 bay leaf

• 1 tablespoon peeled, grated ginger

• 1 thai pepper sliced (optional)

• 5-6 medium roma tomatoes pureed (about 2 cups)

• 1/2 teaspoon ground coriander

• ½ teaspoon red chile powder

• 1 teaspoon salt

• ½ teaspoon sugar

  

Yield - About a cup

Method

• Heat 2 tablespoons oil in a skillet at medium heat. Add 1/4 teaspoon cumin, mustard and 1 teaspoon nigella seeds after two minutes.

• Once the seeds stop popping, add 1/2 teaspoon turmeric, 8-10 curry leaves, 1 bay leaf, 1 tablespoon grated ginger and 1 sliced pepper.

• Combine in pureed roma tomatoes along with 1 cup water and cover the skillet to prevent the tomato puree from staining your stovetop due to bubbling.

• Cook for about 20 minutes, stir once or twice in between. The tomatoes will break down fast and sweat. We need this tomato water to reduce so the flavors are concentrated.

• Mix in 1/2 teaspoon ground coriander and 1/2 teaspoon red chile powder, 1 teaspoon salt and 1/2 teaspoon sugar.

• Let the chutney cook for another 10 minutes. Please note the chutney will thicken after you turn the heat off and as it sits.

• This chutney will last for 3-4 day at least if stored in the refrigerator.

RECIPES - Kadhi

Ingredients

• 1 cup plain yogurt

• 1/4 cup chickpea flour

• 1 teaspoon peeled, grated ginger

• 1 teaspoon salt

• 1/2 teaspoon sugar

• 2 tablespoons ghee

• 1/4 teaspoon black mustard seeds

• 1/4 teaspoon cumin seeds

• 1/4 teaspoon fenugreek seeds

• 1 pinch asafetida

• 1/4 teaspoon turmeric

• 8-10 curry leaves

• 1 thai chile pepper sliced thin

• Chopped cilantro for garnish

Method

• Combine 1 cup plain yogurt and 1/4 cup chickpea flour in a mixing bowl. Whisk vigorously to get rid of chickpea flour lumps and get a smooth mix. Add 3 cups water and whisk again.

• Add 1 teaspoon peeled and grated ginger, 1 teaspoon salt and 1/2 teaspoon sugar to the whisked yogurt and whisk again to dissolve the sugar and salt. Set aside.

• Heat a thick-bottomed pot on medium heat. Pour in 2 tablespoons ghee in it. Sorry, vegans, I have not yet veganized kadhi. But hoping to soon.

• Let the ghee heat up for a minute and combine in 1/4 teaspoon black mustard seeds, cumin seeds and fenugreek seeds each. Please pay attention here, the seeds can burn and turn nasty bitter. As soon as the seeds stop sizzling, add 1 pinch asafetida, 8-10 curry leaves, 1 sliced chile pepper and 1/4 teaspoon turmeric.

• Pour in the yogurt and chickpea flour mixture in the pot carefully and increase the heat to medium high. Now till the first boil comes, stir continuously, otherwise the yogurt can break (solids separate from the water) and look unsavory.

• Once the kadhi comes to a rolling boil, garnish with chopped cilantro.

• As the kadhi sits, it will thicken so if you are not going to eat right away, please add water as per your preference and heat up the kadhi before serving.

• Serve hot with pulao and chutney.

  

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I understand viscerally the anxiety and fear that many report about PCs. But considering the benefits, I have gotten over my fear over the years and merrily joined the band of 20 million Indian households who own a PC. Nowadays though silent PCs are available which merely hiss and don’t whistle. But if an Indian kitchen is deprived of its favorite sound effects, the family will be hard pressed to feel content even after a full meal.

PCs particularly important in the current climate

With the current geo-political issues and the war in the Middle East, Indians have started feeling the heat of LPG (liquified petroleum gas) shortage. LPG is the primary cooking gas in India supplied through cylinders and pipelines to households. In the last few years, various government schemes have increased the number of cooking gas connections in rural areas too. So the demand for LPG has shot up while India has to import about 60-65% of its demand. The prices have risen by about 6-7% in the last few weeks leading to closures of small eateries, food stalls and even known restaurants in cities like Mumbai. Social media is agog with influencers recommending tips and techniques suitable to this shortage. The PC features prominently in these social media posts.

What is a pressure cooker?

A PC is a sealed, thick-bottomed pot with tight locking lid, generally made of stainless steel or aluminum. Though electric versions are also available these days, most Indians use the stovetop version. Depending on its volume, the PC contains multiple inner stacked containers, which are used by Indians to cook beans, lentils, rice, vegetables or meat. Below these containers is water and as the pot is sealed with food inside and heat is applied, the water turns into steam and cooks the food about 70% faster than in an open pot. Since the PC comes with minimum two inner containers, two dishes (typically rice and lentils) get cooked at the same time, conserving energy and saving time in process, a boon for busy homemakers, working parents and anyone who wants to cook speedily.

Magic of PCs

Studies report that PCs are 70% energy efficient and reduce cooking time by almost 50%. In further specific studies relevant for the Indian context, PCs are especially beneficial for items requiring longer cooking times like beans and some lentils. They are also supposed to be reduce carbon emissions compared to traditional cooking methods. In addition, pressure cooking is also reported to minimize nutrient loss arising out of traditional cooking methods like boiling and improve the antioxidant properties of beans.

Now you know why I pay attention to the opinion of the IAPF (Indian Aunties Police Force). They may or may not know the science behind pressure cooking, but they caught on to the energy saving feature of PCs and not only stuck to them but became their unofficial spokesperson.

Please note that even before the on-going war and crisis, the PC has had an iron grip on Indian kitchens. After a long list of incremental innovations, the PCs started appearing in the Indian kitchens in the late 1950s. As soon as the safety standards and quality of PCs improved in the late 1960s and early 1970s, they were lapped by Indian home cooks and the likes of IAPF mainly because of their energy-saving properties. They soon became indispensable to homemakers, so much so that when my mother got married and came to Mumbai, she became an object of ridicule guised as amazement for not using a PC.

In the urban areas of India, pressure cookers are present in over 90% of the households. It is reported that New Delhi, the capital of India, PCs have penetrated into 99% of the households. With the easy availability of liquified petroleum gas (LPG) in rural India, the number of PCs in the rural areas are rising too. Though exact numbers are hard to find, out of the 250 million households, 20 million households have PCs in India. And more importantly it is very common for households to have multiple PCs. I have two, one is 3 litres - to cook for one or two people and 5 litres - for when guests come. Similarly, people have multiple ones for different applications - one for meat, one for dal, rice and another one - a sauté pan like PC but with a tight lid for rice preparations like pulao or khichdi.

How PC jumpstarts the meal prep

A 5-litre PC has three stacked inner containers, so rice, dal and vegetables cook simultaneously. So more than half the work is done, now it’s just a matter of seasoning and cooking the lentils and vegetables with tadka and spices. Home cooks feel a massive relief when the “cooker is done.”

I am fascinated by the devilry the Indian home cooks perform in their kitchen with the PCs. Not only will they rattle off the number of whistles their PC will need to cook a particular dish, but they also have fixes and remedies if the PC is not working at its best. For example, if the rubber ring aka gasket that lines the lip of the lid becomes loose, the steam can escape prolonging the cooking time. I have seen home cooks stretch the rubber ring like resistance bands or keep it in the freezer for 10 min - they will do something and make it work. Because the horror of cooking lentils like pigeon peas or split chana dal in an open pot and the resulting waste of energy/fuel is unimaginable!

Here’s how the home cooks subjugate PC to their will -

• Combine tadka, lentils and vegetables to make dal. The PC melds the flavors beautifully and creates a mushy (in a good way) kind of texture where each lentil has broken down to form a silky, satiny dal. Paired with white rice, it will be heaven.

• A PC is perfect for a one-pot meal like pulao - a spiced rice cooked with vegetables like potatoes, onions, peas, carrots, cauliflower

• I have heard of cakes being cooked in a PC, that boggles my mind. Lo behold, what surprise? The recipe is by an Indian food blogger.

• Recently I saw my MIL use the PC both as a PC and as an open pot while cooking rice. The rice, IMO, was too much for the size of the PC. But what do I know, I’m not a card-carrying member of the IAPF? She started cooking the rice in the PC like one would in an open pot and then when the water evaporated, she fastened the lid like a PC. And the snow-white, steaming hot rice was ready in a whistle. Here’s how a device is brought to its knees!

Do you have an Instant Pot or an electric PC? Well, then you don’t need a stovetop PC. But if you are in the market for a PC, I hope you give the stovetop PC a strong consideration especially if counterspace or storage space is limited in your kitchen. Just remember these safety tips

RECIPE - MASALA KHICHDI IN A PRESSURE COOKER

Ingredients

• 3/4 cup short or medium grain rice (I use sona masuri, available in Asian grocery stores)

• 1/4 cup yellow split moong dal

• 1 handful red lentils

• 2 tablespoons ghee or any neutral oil (if vegan)

• 1/4 teaspoon cumin seeds

• 10-15 curry leaves

• 7-8 black peppercorns

• 1” cinnamon stick

• ½ teaspoon turmeric powder

• 1 medium red onion or 3/4 cup peeled, diced into ½”x 1/4” pieces

• 1 medium tomato chopped into ½” x ½” pieces

• 1 tablespoon ginger peeled and grated or thinly sliced

• 1 cup cut carrots and beans (carrots into 1/4” thick half-moon shape pieces and beans into 1/2” long pieces)

• 1 teaspoon coriander powder

• 1/2 teaspoon garam masala

• 1/2 teaspoon red chile powder

• 3/4 teaspoon salt

• 2 teaspoons tomato ketchup

Yield – Serves 2/3 people

Method

• Combine ¾ cup rice, ¼ cup split yellow mung dal and handful red lentils and wash them thoroughly till the drained water runs clear. I had to rinse them 4 times for the water to turn clear. Add water to the rice and dal mixture till it is submerged in water and set aside to soak for 30 minutes. If you don’t have the time, soak for at least 5 minutes.

• Heat 2 tablespoons ghee or neutral oil in the pressure cooker.

• After letting the ghee heat up for 2 minutes, add 1/4 teaspoon cumin seeds and once they stop sizzling, follow up with 10-15 curry leaves, 7-8 black peppercorns, 1” cinnamon stick, ½ cup onion pieces and 1/2 teaspoon turmeric powder. The aroma of onions, cumin, peppercorns and cinnamon is heady.

• Sauté for 7-8 minutes till the onions acquire a brown edge. Combine in the diced pieces of 1 tomato, a cup of diced carrots and green beans, 1 tablespoon grated ginger and ¾ tsp salt. Let the vegetables sweat and cook for 5 minutes. Mix 1 teaspoon coriander powder, ½ teaspoon garam masala, ½ teaspoon red chile powder and 2 teaspoons ketchup with the vegetables.

• Drain and discard the water from the rice and dal mixture, add it to the Khichdi pot and stir well.

• Pour 3.5 cups water and raise the heat to high. Close the PC with its lid and make sure the lid is tight and securely closed. Turn the heat to medium high.

• Now sit and read a book (I’m reading JackFruit Chronicles by of Scribbles and Dribbles.) She is joining our book club meeting later in the year by Zoom. Can’t wait to talk to her.

• But while reading make sure your one ear is taking note of the PC. Let the PC take 4 whistles.

• After 4 whistles, turn the heat to super low. This is when the flavors meld into a dish that is stewy and cohesive.

• Turn the heat off after 10 minutes at super low heat. Let the PC cool down naturally.

• Open the PC’s lid and serve khichdi hot. Pour ghee generously on the Khichdi and eat with a pickle, a bowl of plain yogurt and roasted or deep-fried paapad.

The next post will present a tomato chutney with a mystery spice I had not used before, kadhi - a yogurty stew that defies categorization and pulao (spiced rice). I had this meal first at my sister-in-law’s house in Eastern part of India and I’m hooked on to this spice as well as meal.

I first found out about this project in late 2023 and knew that I had to be part of it somehow. I contacted Rushina who suggested I write an article about how I am chutneyfying non-traditional ingredients or transforming chutneys into sauces, dips or marinades and contribute a few recipes. I jumped at the opportunity and wrote the recipes for green apple and red bell pepper chutney.

Another chutney I was considering for this anthology is the peanut chutney. It’s a dry, powdery chutney hailing from eastern Maharashtra, the region where I come from. It’s made from crushing roasted peanuts along with spices to a granular powder.

Peanut chutney accompanies coarse sorghum bread and white onion as an afternoon lunch for a farmer from Maharashtra (the western Indian state, where I come from). Imagine a farmer sitting down for lunch under a tree. He pours some oil over the fiery orange looking chutney (they make it hot, hot, hot) and breaks off a chunk of the sorghum bread – called bhakri -. He mixes the oil and the peanut chutney with the bread piece, scoops up the oily chutney with bread and tears off a layer of the onion. This rural onion is small, the size of key limes. The farmer whacks the onion with the base of his palm, the onion splits into two and he eats a layer with every bite. No cutting board, no knife, no peeling the skin, no cutting and no tears!

In my family peanut chutney is so beloved that we have absolutely no qualms in fighting for it.

Here are some familial incidents, old and new, which indicate how close to our heart this condiment is –

- My eldest uncle would grumble that blenders (called mixers in India) have destroyed the peanut chutney. Apparently, the authentic taste is lost when the peanuts are not ground in a mortar and pestle. My aunt would retort cheekily that how can a man appreciate anything unless the woman has shed sweat for it. My uncle was bemoaning the loss of traditional style of cooking, while my aunt felt that the benefits of these wonder gadgets far outweighed the loss of taste, if any. Both are gone now and this is one of their wonderful memories I cherish.

- That my father is a fussy eater is well-known in the family. One of his friend’s jokes, that my father inspects the table set for dinner first and then asks for the dish that has not been made. Well, just for occasions like this, my mom has peanut chutney ready. He makes a well inside the small mound of peanut chutney, pours oil in it, mixes the oil and chutney with a piece of roti and there’s peace in the world.

- Kids have also come to love the peanut chutney. Every time my niece goes to her college town, the peanut chutney parcel from her grandmother is a must. The chutney helps her ride the sub-par food in the dorms. When the sabji is over-cooked and the dal is watery, she can at least eat the chutney with roti. Another niece has to hide the peanut chutney from her friends and one more survived on peanut chutney and roti for a fussy eating phase that lasted almost two years.

- My mother is one of the seven children; I have five aunts and two uncles. An unsaid adage was my grandmother was the best cook in the family followed by my aunt number two, VM, the one who taught me how to make Bisi Bele Bhaat. This fact was undisputed. But after the first two positions, the rest of the hierarchy was fuzzy, up for grabs and subject to intense discussion, jest and teasing. We were at VM’s house for brunch. Mind-blowing food was laid on the table along with peanut chutney. At the meal my father asks my uncle, another aunt’s husband, with a thoughtful expression, “Why does the peanut chutney in our house never taste like this?” And my uncle answers facetiously, “True, true. Wonder why?” Meanwhile my grandfather, a traditional old man who thought that the way to stay in a man’s heart is through the stomach is taking in this conversation as if he’s been punched in the gut. And the next day as soon as he sees my mother and aunt (the wife of the uncle, who had the above exchange with my father), he dutifully reports the above conversation to them. And both my mom and my aunt, the seasoned wives they are, yes-yes my grandfather and move on. I remember thinking as a kid, whew, disaster averted.

- Peanut chutney is dry, light and super travel-friendly. I go to India at least once a year, so it is a must in my return bags.

I use my mother’s trick to make quick peanut chutney as a sidekick to the dosa (savory, south Indian crepe made from rice and split, black gram), especially when there is no time to make fresh coconut chutney. When in need of a quick meal, I riff off of this trick. After plain yogurt (about half the proportion of chutney), I mix some finely diced red onions and chopped cilantro. Warm up a pita bread in the oven and eat with this dressed-up chutney.

Here’s a kicker recipe for today, though. A noodle recipe that incorporates the peanut chutney. I got the idea after eating pad-thai, which had coarsely chopped roasted peanuts in it. I can tell you right now, my noodle recipe with peanut chutney is going to be a hot topic of discussion the next time I go to India. People are not going to be happy …

RECIPE - PEANUT CHUTNEY

Ingredients

• 1 cup unsalted, unroasted peanuts

• 1/2 teaspoon cumin powder

• 1/2 teaspoon red chile powder

• 1/4 teaspoon salt

Method

• Roast the peanuts in a 350°F oven (or toaster oven, like I do) for 6 to 8 minutes, or until the nuts have turned dark brown, a shade darker than golden brown.

• Keep an eye on them! (After 3 minutes, rotate the pan in such a way that the peanuts in the back come to the front.)

• Turn the oven off after peanuts become patchy brown, take the peanuts out, and let cool.

• In a food processor or blender, blitz 1/2 teaspoon cumin powder, 1/2 teaspoon red chile powder and salt along with peanuts into a coarse powder. Uneven granules and unsmoothness give this chutney its rustic flair.

• Keep in a zip-top bag or tightly sealed jar. We ration and preserve my MIL’s chutney for months by storing it in the fridge.

  RECIPE - PEANUTTY NOODLES

  

  Ingredients

• 6-ounce udon or soba noodles, any thickness you prefer

• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil

• 1 cup broccoli florets chopped into 1-inch pieces

• 1 cup red bell pepper, chopped into 1-inch pieces

• 3/4 cup thinly sliced scallions, divided

• 2 tablespoons peanut chutney, prepared as per the above recipe

• 2 tablespoons light soy sauce

Method

• Cook the noodles according to the instructions on their packet and set aside in a colander. Immerse the colander in a pot of room temperature water to prevent them from clumping. Retain half a cup of water in which you boiled the noodles.

• Heat 2 tablespoons vegetable oil in a sauté pan. Add half of the scallions and let cook for a minute.

• Add 1 cup broccoli florets and sauté for 5 minutes. Feel free to add broccoli stems too.

• Follow with 1 cup red bell pepper pieces and sauté for about 3 to 4 minutes. (We want both these vegetables to lose their raw flavor but still have a crunch.) Substitute with vegetables of your choice as long as the vegetables retain some bite, shape and do not become mushy. Carrots, red onions, snap peas, zucchini, water chestnuts, baby corn, mushrooms, French beans are great substitutes.

• Add 2 tablespoons peanut chutney and mix well, followed by 2 tablespoons soy sauce. Sauté till the sauce coats all of the vegetables.

• Combine boiled noodles into the pan and mix till the noodles are coated evenly with soy sauce/peanut chutney mixture.

• Pour some of the starchy noodle water if you like your noodles wetter.

• Garnish with rest of the scallions and serve hot. Top with any hot sauce of your choice.

For the next post, I plan to write about stove-top pressure cookers and India’s love affair with them. Do you use one? Or a post about snacky dinner. What would you prefer?

Lonavala is a hill station – a word used in India for mountainous towns and tourist attractions – located on the route between Mumbai and Pune. It was once-upon-a-time sleepy town of misty mountains, waterfalls and lush greenery, where the rich built their summer bungalows and where they escaped to beat the humidity of Mumbai. However, it was important for us because it was the hometown of chikki aka nut brittles.

A relatively new snack, reported to have originated in late 19^th century, chikki was a convenient and delicious bite for workers who were laying down the train tracks from Mumbai to Pune. Maganlal Aggarwal, a sweet shop owner, started packaging and selling chikki first. It was prepared from common ingredients – jaggery, peanuts and ghee. Ease of travel between the two cities increased the popularity of chikki, said to be named after the Marathi word “chikat,” meaning sticky (language of Maharashtra and my mother tongue).

Though peanut chikki is the best, IMO, there are many varieties - sesame, cashew, almond and pistachio, sugar-free and fancy, unheard ones like nuts and chocolate, watermelon seeds, strawberry peanut chikki.

What sets this addictive brittle apart is jaggery, a sweetener commonly preferred across India for desserts and sweets with a long shelf life. Native to the Indian subcontinent, I remember senior citizens from my grandparents’ generation preferred jaggery to sweeten their chai (I hope you have stopped saying chai tea) over sugar – small act of rebellion as sugar was a refined product and a result of industrialization and colonization.

Now let’s unpack what jaggery is -

Solid, granular and available in blocks, jaggery is dehydrated sugarcane juice. Jaggery is also made from the sap of various palm trees especially in the countries of Indian subcontinent. Also known as Gul, Gud, Gur, jaggery has a beautiful caramel brown color (avoid very light colored jaggery as it contains additives). In western India, jaggery is manufactured by boiling, churning and filtering sugarcane juice, which solidifies into blocks on cooling. Because jaggery is unrefined, it contains all minerals – calcium, phosphorous and iron - present in sugarcane juice and is more complex in structure and flavor compared to sugar. Unlike sugar, which hits your palate bam, bam, bam, jaggery’s sweetness is dainty and coy. Even though jaggery is mostly sold in blocks, which you can scrape with a knife, it lands on your tongue in interesting granules. Try some in your morning coffee or chai for I believe alternatives like jaggery sophisticate your palate. Buy desi jaggery or the one sold in small lumps or blocks. Avoid jaggery powder.

Roasted unsalted peanuts paired with jaggery taste superb. My father says this combo was their candy when they were growing up.

Association between jaggery and chikki is tight, I cannot imagine the latter without the former.

RECIPE - FENNEL-SPICED PEPITA SEEDS BRITTLE

Though I was not exposed to pepita seeds in India, they are a must-have part of my pantry, mainly because, they are an ideal substitute for peanuts. When roasted and crushed coarse, they usher in similar creaminess, thicken the dish and round out the flavors like peanuts.

This brittle has three main ingredients - roasted pepita seeds, jaggery and fennel seeds. Seasoning the jaggery with roughly crushed, toasted fennel seeds introduces a haunting flavor, making the taster ponder where this flavor is coming from. I love that experience.

Prep time – 10 min, Cook time – 30 min, Serves 2-3

Equipment: Cutting board, knife, thick-bottomed sauté pan, food processor or mortar and pestle, spatula, rolling pin, sheet pan, cooking spray

Ingredients

• 1/2 teaspoon fennel seeds

• 1 cup pepita seeds

• 3/4 cup jaggery scraped from a block or cubes

• 1/2 tablespoon coconut oil

Method

1. Place a thick-bottomed sauté pan over medium heat. Toast the 1/2 teaspoon fennel seeds for about 3-4 minutes till they start becoming dark and aromatic. Set them aside to cool.

2. In the same pan, add 1 cup pepita seeds. Keep the heat on medium and stir to avoid uneven browning.

3. You will get a nutty aroma in about 2 minutes, and the seeds will start browning and make a tad-tad sound in 5-6 minutes. Taste them at this stage, they are light and most importantly, they don’t stick in your teeth, which is super annoying to say the least. This according to me is the biggest indicator that roasting is done well. Let them cool down.

   

4. Crush the fennel seeds coarse in a mortar and pestle. If you don’t have a M&P, place them inside a ziploc bag and move the rolling pin over the ziploc. A coarse grind is fine.

5. Transfer the cooled down pepita seeds to a clean kitchen napkin and fold the ends to form a bundle. Now pound the wrapped seeds with the pestle or a can of beans. The idea is to get a coarse ground; some whole seeds are fine too. Or use a food processor for a quick whir. We do not want a powder though.

6. Place a 15” x 15” parchment paper on a square or a round sheet pan and grease with cooking spray. Keep another same-sized parchment paper ready. Also keep a small bowl of room temperature water ready next to your stove burner.

7. In the same thick-bottomed sauté pan, pour 1/2 tablespoon of coconut oil. Turn the heat to medium. Add the 3/4 cup scraped jaggery.

8. The jaggery will start melting almost right away. Mix in the fennel powder. Stir continuously with a sturdy spatula as it starts bubbling.

   

9. Within 8 minutes, the jaggery will start frothing, becoming lighter and darkening.

10. Turn the heat to lowest and shake the spatula over a bowl of water. Couple of drops of jaggery will fall in the water, transforming into a solid bit. Give it a minute and now put the bit in your mouth, if it is crispy, the jaggery is ready. If not, continue to stir and perform the test again after 2 minutes.

11. Combine the ground pepita seeds with liquid jaggery. Mix well and turn the heat off.

12. Pour the mixture on greased parchment paper. Place the other paper on it, grease side down. Now move the rolling pin over paper to get a thin chikki sheet. Thinner the sheet, crispier the brittle.

13. Cut the sheet into squares or diamonds or uneven pieces, whatever you prefer with a greased knife. Let the pieces cool down completely and store in a container.

14. Serve the brittle crumbled over your morning oatmeal or Greek yogurt or insert a piece into vanilla ice cream (yes, spring is coming). Or just snack on it.

RECIPE – GINGER-SPICED PEANUT CHIKKI

Peanut chikki is the original chikki. It becomes super light, airy and crispy. The flavor accent of dry ginger, though not traditional, is common in Indian winter sweets like laddu and halwa. Snacks like this peanut brittle are fantastic hiking snacks and can easily win in a throwdown with energy bars.

Ingredients

• 1 cup roasted, unsalted peanuts #

• ¾ cup jaggery scraped

• ½ tablespoon coconut oil

• 1 teaspoon dry ginger powder

Prep time – 10 min, Cook time – 30 min, Serves 2-3

Equipment: Cutting board, knife, thick-bottomed sauté pan, food processor or mortar and pestle, spatula, rolling pin, sheet pan, cooking spray

# Roasting peanuts at home is an easy and inexpensive option compared to buying them. Spread raw, shelled peanuts on a small sheet pan and insert the sheet pan in a 350 degrees F pre-heated toaster oven. After 3 minutes, rotate the sheet pan from front to back. After 2 minutes, turn the toaster oven off and take the peanuts out. After they cool down, gather them in a kitchen towel and rub the towel with slight pressure of the palms. The papery skin will come off. Now’s the irritating part, removing the skin. When I am short on time, I skip this step, to the horror of IAPF. Or you can pick out the peanuts individually if you fear the wrath of IAPF. You can also use a winnowing basket to separate the peanut from the skin. Or just don’t deal with it, the IAPF can fly a kite, for the taste is not impacted by the skin at all.

Method

1. Gather the 1 cup roasted, unsalted peanuts in a kitchen towel and pound the wrapped peanuts with a pestle or a can of beans. We want a coarse powder. Or run them through a food processor for a quick whir.

2. In a thick-bottomed sauté pan, pour 1/2 a tablespoon of coconut oil. Turn the heat to medium. Add 3/4 cup scraped jaggery.

3. The jaggery will start melting almost right away. Mix the 1 teaspoon ginger powder in jaggery. Stir continuously with a sturdy spatula as it starts bubbling.

4. Within 8 minutes, the jaggery will start frothing, becoming lighter and darkening.

5. Turn the heat to the lowest and shake the spatula over the bowl of water. Couple of drops of jaggery will fall in the water, transforming into a solid bit. Give it a minute and now put the bit in your mouth, if it is crispy, the jaggery is ready. If not, continue to stir and perform the test again after 2 minutes.

6. Combine the ground peanuts with liquid jaggery. Mix well and turn the heat off.

7. Pour the mixture on greased parchment paper. Place the other paper on it, grease side down. Now move the rolling pin over paper to get a thin sheet. Thinner the sheet, crispier the brittle.

8. Cut the sheet into squares or diamonds or uneven pieces, whatever you prefer with a greased knife. Let the pieces cool down completely and store in a container.

9. I enjoy this brittle as a snack though it will taste superb as a topping for Greek yogurt or oatmeal too.

I hope everyone is doing well and the East coasters are enjoying the heat wave.

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Dals, all sorts of vegetable soups, pasta dressed with tomato sauce drunk on thai curry paste, hot sandwiches, saucy beans, curries and rice is my shtick these days. Along with food that is temperature hot, I want something that is spicy hot too. This grilled cheese sandwich jump-started with onions and chile peppers dipped in a coconutty tomato soup is rocking my boat these days.

RECIPE - COCONUTTY TOMATO SOUP

Soup is not really found in a traditional Indian meal. So what you are seeing here is a Masale Bhaat (rice cooked with spices and vegetables) accompaniment called “tomato saar” cooked in coastal kitchens of western India. A soup-like dish with tomato pulp as the base ingredient, it starts with mustard and cumin seeds tadka, seasoned with dry red chile pepper, curry leaves and enriched with coconut milk. I make extra to drink the next day too.

Ingredients

• 3 medium plum tomatoes

• 2 teaspoons ghee/coconut oil/vegetable oil

• ¼ teaspoon mustard seeds

• ¼ teaspoon cumin seeds

• ¼ teaspoon turmeric

• 10-12 curry leaves

• 1 dry red chile pepper (Arbol or guajillo) (optional)

• 1 teaspoon salt

• ½ teaspoon red chile powder

• 1 teaspoon sugar

• ½ teaspoon crushed black pepper

• 200 ml (1/2 can) coconut milk

• Chopped cilantro or parsley (optional)

Method

• Score an “X” at the bottom of each tomato

• Boil 3-4 cups of water in a thick-bottomed pot. Once it comes to rolling boil, carefully place tomatoes in the boiling water.

• Let them sit in the water for 2 minutes. You will see that scored lines “X” will extend to the whole tomato.

• Turn the heat off. Fish out the tomatoes carefully and place them in a colander in the sink. Run cold water on top of the tomatoes for a minute. This will cool the latent heat in the tomatoes and stop the cooking process. Do not discard the water in which the tomatoes were boiled. You will use a small portion in the recipe ahead but include the rest of the tomato-laced water in any recipe involving water or broth. Store the water in another container and wipe the pot dry.

• Peel the tomatoes and discard the skins. Blend the tomatoes fine.

• Now place the same thick-bottomed pot you used to boil tomatoes over medium heat and pour in 2 teaspoons ghee/coconut oil or vegetable oil.

• Add ¼ teaspoon mustard and cumin seeds each after the fat has heated for 2 minutes.

• Both the seeds will pop and sizzle and once this dance stops, add ¼ teaspoon turmeric, 10-12 curry leaves and 1 dry red chile pepper. Sauté for a minute.

• Now carefully pour the blended tomato pulp (I got about 1.5 cups) carefully and follow up with 1 teaspoon salt, 1/2 teaspoon red chile powder and 1 teaspoon sugar. Pour the water you set aside in which the tomatoes were boiled as per your preference. I like a runny soup, so I poured about a cup of the water. If you like a thick soup, pour ½ a cup. Mix well.

• Mix well. You may find that the blended tomatoes in the tadka have a slightly unsavory appearance. Not to worry! Coconut milk will smoothen this out.

• Pour 200 ml coconut milk and add ½ teaspoon black crushed pepper.

• Let the soup come to a nice boil. Turn the heat off and serve hot.

  

RECIPE – GRILLED CHEESE SANDWICH WITH AN INDIAN TWIST

Grilled Cheese Sandwich in India is not melted cheese inside two pieces of bread. The grated cheese is seasoned with diced onions, finely chopped chile peppers and chopped cilantro. As a result, when the sandwich is cut and pulled apart, along with the strand of cheese, you see the green flecks of cilantro and peppers and the translucence of onions. And that, my friends, is the Indian twist. Sold as chilli cheese toast or cheese toastie, this dish is available in the room service of 5-star hotels as well as quick service restaurants like Udupis in Indian cities.

Ingredients

• ½ cup grated dry aged mozzarella

• ½ cup grated Gouda cheese

• ½ cup finely diced red onions

• 1-2 sliced green chile peppers (optional)

• 2-3 stems of cilantro or parsley finely chopped along with the stems

• ½ teaspoon crushed black pepper

• ¼ teaspoon salt

• 4 slices of bread of your choice (I prefer a seedy bread)

• Olive oil for brushing

Method

• Combine ½ cup grated mozzarella, ½ cup grated Gouda, ½ cup diced red onions, 1-2 sliced green chile peppers, finely chopped cilantro, ¼ teaspoon salt and ½ teaspoon crushed black pepper in a big bowl. Any melty cheese will do, I like cheddar, havarti or asiago too.

  

• Feel free to use other melty cheeses like pepper jack, cheddar and Havarti.

• Heat up the cast iron pan over medium heat.

• Place two slices of bread next to each other on the cutting board. Scoop ½ cup of onion and cheese mixture and place it carefully on one slice. Or you can go light on the mixture. Spread it around to cover the entire bread surface. Cover it with the other slice.

• Transfer the sandwich carefully from the cutting board to the skillet. Brush the top with olive oil. With a metal spatula, press gently.

• Lift up the sandwich slightly to see if the bottom is becoming toasty and acquiring a golden hue. If yes, flip the side. Brush with olive oil.

• Check if the bottom has become toasty. Flip again and brush with olive oil.

• Let the sandwich acquire the color and toastiness you prefer.

• Move the sandwich from the skillet to the cutting board. Cut in half and repeat with the other sandwich. If you have some stuffing mix left over, sprinkle it on the soup or make an open-faced sandwich.

• Serve right away with hot coconutty tomato soup.

Hope this meal warms your insides and satisfies your palate, the way it does for me.

Chronology of Steps

• Keep the water for boiling the tomatoes.

• Dice onions, chile peppers and cilantro or parsley

• Place the tomatoes in the boiling water. After 2 minutes, fish out the tomatoes into a colander and place them in the sink under running cold water for a minute or two. Turn the water off and let them rest and cool.

• Grate the cheeses and mix with onions, peppers and cilantro in a mixing bowl. Please, please use a mixing bowl that is bigger than its contents. (Sorry, my pet peeve is all these food videos where it seems as if the contents are going to spill out any minute). Keep aside.

• Make the soup and after it comes to a boil, turn the heat to low.

• Now make the sandwiches.

• Serve both piping hot.

What am I Watching

Riot Women, a show on Britbox about a group of spunky, spiky women of a certain age, who form a rock band in order to be SEEN by their family, friends, community. It is a cute, heart-warming show without whitewashing any of the nastiness and hardships of life.

Watching anything interesting?

The next post has a fun dish - a nutty, sweet munchie of my childhood called, Chikki.

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But some important announcements first!

Curry Night was unleashed last week! It is a beautiful collection of curry recipes from around the world contributed by 25 talented and thoughtful food creators on Substack. I had the pleasure of collaborating with on this project. She initiated this idea, invited me to work with her and spearheaded this event. Thank you, Lisa and thanks to all the contributors. Do check out Lisa’s Culinary Repertoire, and the newsletters of all contributors, I’m sure you will end up subscribing to all.

ChutneyLovers

Curry Night: A feast of curries from around the world

This Curry Night post brings together a global collection of curry recipes written by experienced food writers, spanning Sri Lankan, Indian, Bengali, Thai, Japanese, East African, Jewish South Asian, and plant-based traditions, offering both classic curries and thoughtful adaptations rooted in real home cooking…

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7 months ago · 22 likes · 21 comments · Annada D. Rathi and Lisa McLean

Earlier this month, my recipe for Spinach and Potato Toasties was featured on ’s excellent newsletter What Are We Having? January is Lunch Box Month on this newsletter and Hillary is out to solve your lunch problems! Do subscribe!

What Are We Having?

Recipe: Make-Ahead Spinach and Potato Toasties

It’s still January, which means it’s still Lunch Box Month. Here’s what people are saying about it…

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7 months ago · 11 likes · 7 comments · Hillary Dixler Canavan and Annada D. Rathi

Please note that this is a rather long post. If you are reading it in email, you will find it clipped. Click “Read Entire Message” link at the bottom and the whole post will open in a new window.

Back to the featured writing and 11 tenets -

You must be wondering, like any reasonable person, why the tenets are 11 and not a round number like 10 or 5. Blame it on my Indian upbringing & DNA! Every monetary transaction, cheque or cash gift with round numbers like 10, 20, 30 was increased by one. “One” is considered auspicious in Hindu spirituality as it symbolizes the Supreme One. This practice also underlies the belief that life and the divine are One.

1. Tadka Rules Indian cooking

Though Indian food is crazily diverse, tadka is a concept and technique most Indians understand and use every day. It is a foundational cooking technique, executed either at the start of cooking a dish or at the end like a finishing oil. It is prepared by heating, preferably, a neutral oil and adding whole spices to it. The hot oil unlocks the magic kingdom of spices, which release their flavors into the oil. Now the oil is ready to infuse those flavors into whatever follows, be it dal, vegetables or alliums. The typical tadka spices are mustard and cumin seeds but even cloves, black peppers, star anise, cinnamon, fenugreek seeds, carom seeds and bay leaf make a spectacular tadka.

Greatness is greatness, it cannot be hidden. So is the case with talent. Tadka shines in non-Indian applications too. Season a simple green salad with fenugreek seeds tadka, lime juice and salt. Finish cheesy nachos with mustard seeds tadka. Begin a pot of beans with cinnamon and cloves tadka. Serve tomato soup topped with a swirl of cumin seeds tadka. The possibilities are endless.

2. Indian food is regional food

Indian food is NOT a monolith. It is made up of thousands of micro cuisines that dot the country so it is absolutely not an exaggeration to say that the cuisine varies every few kilometers. That’s why when I use the word “Indian food” I try to tag it with the prefix of the region. The food and recipes that ChutneyLovers espouses is primarily Western Indian food with tons of regional and international influence.

Madhur Jaffrey writes wistfully in An Invitation to Indian Cooking, “Someday, I hope, books will be written about all of India’s cuisines - Gujarati food, Malayali food, Assamese food, Punjabi food, Maharashtrian food, Sindhi food, Bengali food, Goan food, Kashmiri food, Hyderabadi food, to name just a few.”

Joyfully, this is already happening. We can see a variety of regional Indian books coming out.

On the Himalayan trail: Recipes and Stories from Kashmir to Ladakh by Romy Gill

Dakshin: Vegetarian Cuisine from South India by Chandra Padmanabhan

Pangat, A Feast: Food and Lore from Marathi Kitchen by Saee Koranne-Khandekar

The Essential North-East Cookbook by Hoihnu Hauzel

(Please note that if you end up buying these books from the links on this post, I will make a small commission)

If you happen to eat at an Indian friend’s house or in an Indian restaurant, do educate yourself about the provenance of the dish and the cuisine. You will be surprised at how you will be showered with recipes, information and memories.

3. Incorporate Legumes, especially lentils in your cooking

Lentils are a BIG part of Indian food (no need of prefix here, this statement applies to the entire country) Lentils are inexpensive, easy and fast to cook and immensely scalable. They welcome and mingle with a variety of spices, seasoning and vegetables to result in delicious stews, soups, mashes or dals.

Embrace this manna! If you are new to lentils, start with red lentils, the easiest and creamiest of the lot. ChutneyLovers has covered lentils in the past and will continue to do so.

ChutneyLovers

Dal Chawal, the national dish of India

Dal chawal, arguably the national dish of India, belongs to the pantheon of world’s canonical dishes like pasta, sandwiches, kebabs, tacos and noodles. They are proven comfort food of millions, warm the tummy and heart, straddle gracefully into other cuisines and are insanely adaptable. Once you internalize the basics of cooking these classics, a new re…

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a year ago · 39 likes · 22 comments · Annada D. Rathi

ChutneyLovers

Bisi Bele Bhaat - A cuddly soft, porridgy meal of rice, lentils and vegetables

All my mavshis (maternal aunts) are superb cooks but my #2 mavshi - VM - is a cook par excellence. I spent last week with the maternal side of my family in Hyderabad, India - my birth town - and had the immense pleasure and honor of cooking with VM. At a ripe age of close to 90, her utmost passion is feeding others, and she cannot wait to get into the k…

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10 months ago · 36 likes · 20 comments · Annada D. Rathi

ChutneyLovers

Dal Chawal II - Spinach Moong Dal & Pan-Fried Chile Peppers

Curry Night is here! Mark your calendars for January 19th when Lisa McLean and I will publish a curated post of curry recipes contributed by over 30 food writers on Substack. This master post will be the one and only resource you will need when you crave Curry. Save this post as a source of inspiration. I bet, after reading this post, you will come up with your ow…

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8 months ago · 20 likes · 11 comments · Annada D. Rathi

4. Spices, start with one or two

Spices are the heart and soul of Indian cooking. Julie Sahni, lesser known than MJ, but equally important to the cause of Indian food in the West, puts it succinctly in Classic Indian Cooking, “ —— the foundation of Indian cooking rests not so much on special techniques or expensive ingredients as on the flavorings - specially spices and herbs. Their uses, in different permutations and combinations, are what give Indian cooking its distinct character.” I know many accomplished home cooks who will have no problem in tackling fresh pasta or an eclair but shy away from plunging into Indian cooking because of the number of spices and their combinations.

Start with one spice, use it across recipes and get comfortable with it. If you are new to spices, my suggestion would be to start with ground coriander. Buy a small bottle and season your beans, stew or soup with it. Marinate your vegetables before grilling in a mix of oil, ground coriander and lime juice. Once you get comfortable with the flavor and usage, come up with your own ways to incorporate it in cooking. Then you can graduate to making your own ground coriander or move to another spice like ground cumin. No need to embrace the whole shebang, cultivate your own group of four to five spices seasoning your food consistently.

5. Sorry, but vegetables cannot be al dente

I am reading ’s superb Lugma right now. In the headnote to a recipe for Grilled Green Beans with Lemon and Feta, “Vegetables cooked al dente are not really a thing in the Middle East; it’s either raw or very cooked, and green beans are no exception.”

Ditto in India, anything less than 100% cooked is equated with the absence of cooking chops. But the IAPF (Indian Aunties Police Force) demands vegetables should not become mushy or mealy too. (Please note that almost 100% of cooking in India is stove top cooking, ovens are not common) Which means one needs to understand the quirks of the vegetable one is cooking, a talent especially required for dry curries like Aloo Gobi. So, MJ’s adaptation of a traditional stove-top cooked cauliflower curry to an oven-roasted version for her western audience is a stroke of genius. The Aloo Gobi recipe posted last year in ChutneyLovers is an adaptation of MJ’s version with addition of potatoes and tomatoes. Follow the same model for these vegetable combinations (you will have to play around with cooking times)

• potatoes, peas and carrots

• green beans or green beans and potatoes

• green beans, peas and carrots

• cabbage or cabbage and potatoes

6. Reduce reliance on recipes

At a fundamental level, every recipe should aim to free the home cook of the need for a recipe. As one cooks from cookbooks and online recipes, the acquired and accumulated knowledge base should eventually cut the cord and permit the home cook to roam confidently in the land of intuitive cooking - to craft a meal around what is tipping towards expiry date in the fridge and pantry, to become comfortable in cooking for an impromptu party and to tailor a meal to the preference and likes of people you are cooking for, even if it means changing your cooking style.

Here’s what I propose - for every two dishes you cook from a recipe, cook one without any prescription. Go a little wild, make mistakes, learn to know your palate. You will be richly rewarded.

Ruby Tandoh writes a corroborating thought about how the human race did not learn to cook by recipes. In All Consuming: Why We eat The Way Eat Now, she writes, “In most places for most of human history, people have learned to cook by talking and showing, and by cooking together in the slow frictionful way that a dish works into your memory.”

7. Shun wastage

The one thing that IAPF abhors is wastage. Home cooks in India are programmed to inculcate “no wastage” thinking in every kitchen action. Preventing wastage is not limited to not letting food go bad or not letting produce rot. It also means utilizing every part of the produce and cooking according to FIFO demands of the refrigerator. Be bold and go to a place you have not gone before to finish the bits and bobs. Recently my husband used last remnants pepper jelly as a sweetener in dal. I have a pile of tortilla chip crumbs languishing and instead of ignoring them to ignominy, I am planning to make nachos in a day or two. My morale is high, so it does not matter if I have to eat them with a spoon. INTENTION AND DISCIPLINE are needed, which I have. Wish me luck!

Here are some other things I have learned over the years -

DON’T discard cilantro stems, just cut them super fine so they pass off as green specs. DON’T discard the central stalk and leafy stems of cauliflower, the same goes for the stalk of cabbage. Cut them into cubes and mix with the rest of the cut vegetable. Treat leaves of radish and beets like any other greens - stir-fry, add them to beans or soups or fold them into pastas. ChutneyLovers has gone as far as turning banana peels and watermelon rind into curries/sabji.

8. Anything can be turned into a chutney

Though the world primarily knows limited chutneys like cilantro, mint and tamarind, the chutney universe in India is fascinatingly vast. Herbs, vegetables, lentils, nuts, fruits, seeds anything can transform into a chutney. My mother remembers a chutney of petals of hibiscus flower from her childhood.

For example, turn your wilting greens and herbs into chutney. The template of a chutney is - blend all the ingredients. At the very basic, a chutney is made up of star ingredient, heat providing ingredient, tart ingredient and homogenizing ingredient. Let me explain - first is the star ingredient – in herb chutneys, star ingredient is cilantro, cilantro-mint, basil. Heat providing ingredients are green chile peppers, dry red chile peppers or red chile powder. The tart ingredient is normally lime/lemon juice, tamarind or even sour yogurt. And the homogenizing ingredient - like roasted peanut powder, sesame powder or grated, unsweetened coconut - prevents the chutney from becoming runny while imparting creaminess to it. Sometimes garlic or ginger is added for additional kick.

Cilantro, parsley, mint, basil and greens like watercress, spinach, fenugreek leaves, fennel fronds are ripe for chutney treatment. A combo of cilantro and parsley or cilantro and mint is wonderful too.

9. Embrace savory pancakes

That pancakes could be sweet was unknown to us while growing up in India. My mother’s kitchen abounded with savory dosas - the talented overseas cousin of a pancake. We ate dosas made from grain flours, semolina, beans and lentils, with grated vegetables and spices in dazzling combinations. Soaked and ground red lentils and mung beans make awesome dosas. They are gluten-free, easy to whip up and scalable for a brunch crowd and pair with salsa and sour cream beautifully.

Your pantry is possibly riddled with rubber-banded packets of flours. Combine them, about 1/4 cup per person, add roasted cumin powder, salt, put chopped cilantro or parsley. If you have time, dice some onions or grate some carrots and mix in. Make a thinner batter compared to the pancake one. And impress the crowd with savory pancakes.

10. Pressure Cooker is your friend

A pressure cooker (PC) is as important to an Indian kitchen as the home cook, because the latter feels incomplete without the former. One often wakes up to sound of whistles of PCs – a shrill, siren-like sound – that permeates inside your brain and forces you to get up. No need of an alarm clock! The use of PCs is so intrinsic to the Indian way of cooking, that recipes or cooking instructions are exchanged in terms of number of whistles (A PC releases pressure by whistles).

Dal, or spiced lentils, are a crucial part of an Indian meal across the country. And lentils are cooked in PCs. Though India uses a wide variety of lentils, one of the most common ones are pigeon peas also known as toor dal. Without a PC, toor dal would easily take 45 min to an hour to cook. But in a PC the cooking happens in half that time. Kidney beans, black eyed peas, garbanzo beans – the other popular beans – are also perfect for PCs. Indian women have also collected a repertoire of PC tips and tricks over the years. When my mother-in-law cooks pigeon peas, she lets the PC take three whistles and then turns down the heat to the minimum for about five minutes. I normally cook my pigeon peas with three-four whistles on my stovetop PC. Though peas end up soft and fully cooked, they still remain disparate. But when I followed my mother-in-law’s tip, the peas come together into a beautiful mush (important as you want your dal creamy with a soupy consistency). An Instant Pot is a PC that does not require baby-sitting. I promise I’ll be back with a post on stove-top PCs and why they are amazing.

11. Slow cook onions

This technique came to me, of all the people, from my father. He is an infrequent cook who will enter the kitchen to cook one odd dish like pithla or a dal. According to him, the final dish becomes kickass by slow roasting the onions in the tadka. Take a good 10-12 minutes on low to medium heat so the onions develop brown edges and impart a savory sweetness and overall, a cohesion of flavors to the final dish.

I learnt about this technique a few years back when I was cribbing to my mother about how my pithla (a pantry-friendly stew from chickpea flour) not coming anywhere close to hers. That’s when inadvertently she spilled the beans about how my father taught her this trick. I almost fell out of my chair.

I have adapted this technique for all the dishes that begin with roasting onions in fat like chhole and palak paneer. It will work particularly well for pasta sauces and bean soups.

Two weeks back I had the pleasure of attending the opening night party for “Malabar,” a restaurant devoted to contemporary coastal Indian cuisine. Chef Rakesh Singh, the executive chef of Rasika West was kind enough to extend an invitation to me. Rasika West is a superb restaurant and every time I have taken my family and friends there, they have been impressed with the Chef Rakesh Singh and his team’s talent and kindness.

My friend, Wendy Feldman Block, was happy to go with me. And we were thrilled with the reception and the warmth of Ashok Bajaj, the founder of the Kinghtsbridge restaurant group, Chef Vikram Sunderam and the staff. The Chef and I hail from Mumbai and before long we both were chatting away to glory in our mother tongue, Marathi. This kind of serendipity brings so much joy! Do go to Malabar if you happen to be in Washington DC!

Next week in a break from our bi-weekly schedule, ChutneyLovers will post recipes for Grilled Cheese Sandwich and Tomato Soup with an Indian twist. The winter demands it.

This Curry Night post brings together a global collection of curry recipes written by experienced food writers, spanning Sri Lankan, Indian, Bengali, Thai, Japanese, East African, Jewish South Asian, and plant-based traditions, offering both classic curries and thoughtful adaptations rooted in real home cooking.

This is a free post and will remain available to anyone interested in exploring global curries and discovering new ways to cook them at home.

I grew up in Mumbai though my parents are originally from the eastern part of Maharashtra (the state in western India, whose capital is Mumbai). Their meals even today are a full spread - roti, white rice, dal (pigeon peas) and two vegetable curries (dry and saucy) – not to mention chutneys, pickles, and diced salad. Although there are no western-style meal courses and everything is served at once, IMHO, curries are the entrees of this meal because everything else remains fairly same, but curries change according to seasons, availability and special days. So instead of asking “what’s for dinner?” I asked, “what’s the curry today?”.

That’s how important curries are in my everyday life. Over the years of cooking, my understanding of curries has evolved. Examining all the beautiful curries while curating this post has enriched my knowledge base. But it seems I have just scratched the surface. After reading and studying the fantastic curries in this post, it is my wish that you become such a pro at “currying” that you take one look at what is in your fridge and pantry, and eureka - you have whipped up a curry of your own. Happy Currying!

This Curry Night event took place because of . She invited me to collaborate on this delightful project, which is well on its way to developing a bustling community of curry creators and curry lovers. Lisa also did all the heavy lifting - she whipped up all the images and collages, wrote the first draft and, in general, thought a few steps ahead. Thank you, Lisa, your talent, hard work and generosity shine bright!

Subscribe to Lisa's Culinary Repertoire

You’ll find the full menu laid out at the top of the post, so you can see what’s on the table at a glance. Below, the recipes are grouped by region and style, making it easy to find your way. There is a great deal here. This is a post to return to, to dip in and out of over time, drawing inspiration from many kitchens, many voices, and many ways of cooking curry well.

This is a very long post so if you are reading it via email, it will be truncated. Just press the “Read Entire Message” link at the bottom and the whole post will open in a new window.

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What Curries mean to ? In her words.

I cook a lot of curries. They are in constant rotation in my kitchen, not as special-occasion food, but as everyday cooking. I started young, helping my Sri Lankan friends after school. Back then, spices and curry powders arrived from Sri Lanka packed into tea chests. Curry leaf plants, pandan and lemongrass were eventually sourced locally and planted in gardens. I didn’t carry much responsibility in those early kitchens. There was onion and garlic chopping, potato peeling, lentil sorting, and plenty of washing up, while the curries themselves were orchestrated by older friends. I was there to help, to talk, and to learn without quite realising that I was learning how to cook curry.

In time, I became the older friend, the one showing others how to cook. Over the years, I’ve learned from every cook I’ve encountered, refining methods and deepening my understanding of how to build exceptional curries across many cultures. From Sri Lanka to India, Indonesia, and beyond, I’ve studied and practised traditions that produce deeply complex, generous food, often using remarkably similar spice boxes to arrive at entirely different outcomes.

One of Lisa's recent posts

Curry Night Menu

Breads

• Cheats Paratha

• Coconut Curry Leaf Roti

• Easy Naan Bread

Vegan and Vegetarian

• Creamy Vegan Curries

• Spaghetti Green Curry Sauce

• Malai Soya Chaap

• Palak Paneer

• Kenyan coconut curry base, Kuku Paka–style

• Walnut and Cauliflower Curry

• Slow Cooker Butternut Squash & Lentil Stew

• Vegetable Curry and Easy Naan Bread

• Japanese-Style Vegetarian Curry

• Sri Lankan Dhal (Parippu)

• Sri Lankan Coconut and Potato Curry Leaf Curry (Pol Ala Kiri Hodi)

• Sri Lankan Potato and Bean Curry

• Sri Lankan White Curry Kofkas

• Vambotu Pahi – Sri Lankan Eggplant Pickle

• Devilled Eggs with Lunu Miris and Curry Leaf Oil

• Mung Bean Sprouts

• Curd

• Pineapple Sambal

• Lunu Miris

• Coconut Curry Leaf Roti

• Rice, gently scented with curry leaves, pandan, and cardamom

• Not! Thai Green Curry

• Sri Lankan inspired Basic Curry Recipe

• Creamy Tomatillo Coconut Curry with Spiced Chickpeas

Chicken

• My Soul Sister’s Bengali Chicken Rezala

• Spayty – Bamboo Chicken Curry

• Chicken Livers in a Spice Onion Masala

• Firecracker Thai Red Curry Vegetables with Chicken

• Indian Inspired Chicken Curry

• Quick Curry in a Hurry

• Slow Cooker Chicken Curry

• Chicken Katsu Curry

• Sri Lankan White Chicken Curry

• Malaysian Style Chicken Curry

Seafood

• Coconut curry Soup with Salmon

Beef

• Japanese Omu Rice

• Easy Slow-Cooked Sri Lankan Beef Curry

Complete Sri Lankan Lunch or Dinner

• Easy Slow-Cooked Sri Lankan Beef Curry

• Sri Lankan Dhal (Parippu)

• Sri Lankan Coconut and Potato Curry Leaf Curry (Pol Ala Kiri Hodi)

• Sri Lankan Potato and Bean Curry

• Sri Lankan White Curry Kofkas

• Vambotu Pahi – Sri Lankan Eggplant Pickle

• Devilled Eggs with Lunu Miris and Curry Leaf Oil

• Mung Bean Sprouts

• Curd

• Pineapple Sambal

• Lunu Miris

• Coconut Curry Leaf Roti

• Rice, gently scented with curry leaves, pandan, and cardamom

• Spiced Vermicelli

• Fresh fruit to finish: rambutans and mangosteen

Let the festivities begin!

Vegan Curries

Creamy Vegan Curries

Jack McNulty - Vegan Weekly

Jack McNulty is a professional chef and food writer with decades of experience cooking, teaching, and thinking deeply about food. He has followed a vegan lifestyle for over ten years, approaching plant-based cooking not as a trend, but as a disciplined craft rooted in health, ethics, and respect for the environment.

Jack trained and worked in professional kitchens in Switzerland, Italy, and France, before spending many years teaching cooks at all levels. That background shapes his writing and recipes, which emphasize clarity, sound technique, and correcting the common mistakes that frustrate both home cooks and professionals. Through VeganWeekly, he treats cooking as a skill worth developing, with the aim of making healthy, satisfying food while respecting the planet and all living beings.

VeganWeekly

It’s Time For A Hot Bath

I woke up on the first Tuesday of January to a picturesque vision of gray lurking just beyond the ice crystals on my kitchen window. I nearly headed back to the warmth of my bed without first sipping…

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8 months ago · 17 likes · 4 comments · Jack McNulty

Creamy Tomatillo Coconut Curry with Spiced Chickpeas

Betty Rodriguez-Hakes - Gourmet Betty

Betty Rodriguez-Hakes is a cooking instructor and founder of gourmetbetty.com. She uses her Cuban roots and 30+ years of raising a family to simplify healthy eating. Her Curry Night feature is a vibrant fusion. It blends Thai red curry and Indian garam masala with the bright acidity of Mexican tomatillos, all finished with a signature Cuban flair. Betty calls chickpeas the “ultimate cultural chameleon” because they adapt to every cuisine. This dish is hearty, budget-friendly, and perfect for busy weeknights. It is also completely flexible. You can include the potatoes or leave them out to keep it light. Discover the secret to this creamy, global comfort meal below.

GourmetBetty

Garbanzos: My Favorite Cultural Chameleon

Garbanzos, also known as chickpeas, were a staple in my Cuban-American household. My mom would add them to fresh salads. Abuela would make hearty stews with her typical Spanish trinity. That includes onion, garlic, and pepper…

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8 months ago · Betty Rodriguez-Hakes

Kenyan coconut curry base, Kuku Paka–style

Elizabeth Pizzinato - The Delicious Bits Dispatch

Elizabeth writes The Delicious Bits Dispatch, a weekly newsletter that finds magic in the small, beautiful details of everyday life, blending curiosity and reflection with a seasonal recipe worth lingering over. Her writing is shaped by close attention to what might otherwise pass unnoticed, a fleeting thought, a half-formed feeling, the particular texture of a day, and a trust that joy often blooms there.

For this Curry Night gathering, Elizabeth draws inspiration from African flavors and techniques, where richly spiced, slow-simmered dishes are built by layering aromatics with warmth, heat, and fat. Inspired by Rachel Adjei, her recipe is a versatile Kenyan curry paste designed as a foundation for coconut curries of all kinds. Adaptable to vegetables, legumes, seafood, or meat, it invites intuitive, flexible cooking.

The Delicious Bits Dispatch

Currying flavour

To everyone new here, welcome. I’m Elizabeth, the writer of The Delicious Bits Dispatch, a weekly missive for the curious, blending discovery, reflection, and musings, always wrapped up with a seasonal recipe worth lingering over…

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8 months ago · 31 likes · 27 comments · Elizabeth Pizzinato

Bangladeshi Curry

My Soul Sister’s Bengali Chicken Rezala

Sanaa Boutayeb Naïm - The Walking Palm

The Walking Palm is written by Sanaa Boutaueb Naïm a Moroccan French storyteller, home cook, and lifelong nomad who has spent more than three decades moving between worlds. From the United States to Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Serbia, and now Poland, she has carried the flavors of her roots while collecting stories from kitchens everywhere.

Through her Substack, she explores food as a bridge between cultures, weaving together flavors and stories of coexistence. She has been cooking since the age of five and now leads culinary retreats in Morocco, bringing people together through food.

For Curry Night, she shares Bengali chicken rezala, a gently spiced, yogurt-based curry made using the bhuna technique. She uses coquelet for its tenderness and depth, a practical choice inspired by what was in the freezer after returning from Morocco. This refined Mughal dish, beloved in Kolkata, has travelled with her for over twenty years.

The Walking Palm

My Soul Sister's Bengali Chicken Rezala

Zarmineh can make any kitchen feel like home…

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8 months ago · 19 likes · 5 comments · Sanaa Boutayeb Naïm

Jewish South Indian Curry

Spayty – Bamboo Chicken Curry

Elli Benaiah - Beyond Babylon & The Jewish Curry Culture Club

Elli Benaiah is a former criminal lawyer, restaurateur, and culinary historian exploring how Jewish kitchens evolved along trade routes linking the Middle East, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. Through Beyond Babylon / The Jewish Curry Culture Club, he traces Jewish South Asian diaspora cooking not as nostalgia, but as living, adaptive cuisine.

Spayty, a chicken curry with bamboo shoots and coconut cream, comes from the Baghdadi Jewish kitchens of Kolkata. Rarely found outside family homes, it may sound Thai at first glance, but is something else entirely: Indian in method, Middle Eastern in sensibility, and Southeast Asian in ingredients. Documented by Copeland Marks and Mavis Hyman, and preserved through family memory rather than menus, Spayty reflects a pluralist community cooking with confidence and care. Kosher, dairy-free, quietly elegant, and deeply comforting, this is curry as migration made delicious.

Beyond Babylon | Jewish Food Stories from Southeast Asia

🐓 🥥 Spayty

Spayty - Baghdadi‑Indian bamboo coconut chicken curry in full regalia…

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a year ago · 5 likes · 3 comments · Elli Benaiah

Parsi Curry

Not! Thai Green Curry

Perzen Patel - Beyond Butter Chicken

Perzen is an Indian food writer, mother of two, and the voice behind Beyond Butter Chicken, a publication exploring Indian food beyond clichés. She writes about identity, motherhood, and third-culture life through the lens of everyday meals, the kind you cook when there is no one to impress.

Her fallback curry for curry night is a Parsi green curry. It shares a name with the Thai classic, but little else. There is no lemongrass or kaffir lime, just coriander, cumin, garlic, green chile peppers, and grated coconut blitzed into a paste and simmered with spices and fish. An overlooked Parsi curry, it is the one you make when you do not know what to cook, want comfort, and absolutely do not want dal again.

Beyond Butter Chicken

Not! Thai Green Curry

For my recipe lovers…

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8 months ago · 20 likes · 6 comments · Perzen Patel

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Indian Curries

Malai Soya Chaap

Harshita saxena - Epicurean Dispatch - My Spice Journal

Harshita Saxena is a chef, writer, and food historian exploring memory, migration, and Indian culinary heritage through her Substack, Epicurean Dispatch – My Spice Journal. She cooks from the quiet corners of her childhood kitchen and draws on the layered legacy of North Indian women who transformed everyday meals into ritual.

This malai soya chaap is her take on a vegetarian classic that mimics meat not in flavour, but in texture, intention, and patience. Slow-cooked with cream, kasuri methi, and a gentle layering of spices, it feels both familiar and quietly luxurious. Through Epicurean Dispatch, Harshita explores food not just as recipe, but as method, story, and inheritance.

Epicurean Dispatch - My Spicy journal

Malai Soya Chaap: The Vegetarian "Chop" That Rewrote North Indian Menus

In the culinary language of North India, the word chaap once belonged to butchers and meat-lovers. It meant chop, usually bone-in cuts of mutton, often grilled, sometimes braised, always rich. These were dishes with lineage: Mughal tables, British clubs, Punjabi home kitchens. But somewhere between 1960 and 1980, chaap took on a second life, this time wrapped around a stick, made not of meat but of a humble mix of soy and gluten…

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8 months ago · 9 likes · 5 comments · Harshita saxena

Palak Paneer

Annada D. Rathi - ChutneyLovers

ChutneyLovers is written by a lifelong food lover Annada, raised in a family where conversation, cooking, and eating all revolved around food. That constant immersion sparked a love of flavors and food writing, and a desire to make Indian cooking feel as approachable for weeknight meals as pasta or stir-fries.

The bi-weekly ChutneyLovers newsletter is for anyone stuck wondering what to cook for dinner, or for those who love Indian flavors but feel intimidated by the idea of cooking them. With a focus on refreshing, off-beat combinations and practical methods, the goal is to help readers create relaxed Indian or Indian-inspired meals in 30 to 60 minutes.

The recipe shared here is palak paneer, a North Indian curry of paneer gently nestled in a silky, delicately spiced spinach purée. It pairs beautifully with paratha, naan, or spooned over rice the next day.

ChutneyLovers

Deconstructing Curry

We, the inhabitants of God’s green earth, are prone to stereotypes. One of them is that Indian food = curry. And that “curry” is a particular dish with a specific recipe. Apart from the Indian connection, saucy and stewy dishes from Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, Indonesia, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Caribbean countries like Jamaica, Trinidad, Guyana, and Ba…

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8 months ago · 34 likes · 29 comments · Annada D. Rathi

Chicken Livers in a Spice Onion Masala

Geetika - Ayurveda in Modern Life

Ayurveda in Modern Life is written by Geetika, a chef turned Ayurvedic Health Counselor and lifelong food lover. She discovered Ayurveda in her fifties, not in a retreat, but in the midst of a busy, overstimulated city life. What surprised her most was how practical, intuitive, and deeply relevant it proved to be, particularly for women navigating midlife.

Through her writing, Geetika translates Ayurvedic principles into real-world tools for better digestion, steadier energy, and calmer minds, without rigid routines or wellness clichés. Her work speaks especially to women over 40, though it resonates with anyone tired of chasing trends and ready for a more personal, sustainable rhythm. She believes wellness should be individual, not prescriptive, and writes the way she once needed someone to write for her about this ancient wisdom.

Ayurveda in Modern Life

A Sunday Curry from My Childhood in India

Namaste and Welcome…

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8 months ago · 13 likes · 18 comments · Geetika

Cheat’s Paratha

Andrew and Donna from Vanilla Black

Andrew and Donna are the duo behind Vanilla Black, the groundbreaking vegetarian restaurant they owned and ran for 16 years. Long before plant-based dining was fashionable, they were serving dishes like brie ice cream, cheddar sponge cake, and mushroom fudge, earning Michelin recommendation and helping inspire a new generation of vegetarian and vegan cooking.

They now write a weekly Substack about what it was really like to run a vegetarian restaurant, sharing the funny moments, tough days, and behind-the-scenes realities.

For Curry Night, they bring a quick, unapologetically cheaty recipe. Paratha, while delicious, can be a faff, so they reframed it as what it essentially is: laminated dough. Enter puff pastry. Same layers, same fat, different method. One baked, one fried. Simple, clever, and very on brand.

Vanilla Black

We Don't Normally Do This - A Recipe For Cheats Paratha

Hiya. If you don’t know who we are, we are Donna and Andrew and we owned and ran a groundbreaking vegetarian restaurant for 16 years. Forget Detox Salad or Baked Peppers, we were offering Brie Ice Cream for starter, Cheddar Cheese Sponge Cake for mains and Mushroom Fudge as a dessert. We were one of the first vegetarian restaurants to be Michelin recomm…

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8 months ago · 30 likes · 25 comments · Vanilla Black

Indian Inspired Chicken Curry

Sheryl O’Connell - Just Really Good Recipes

Sheryl shares food that earns its place through practice and pleasure. This Indian curry is one of those dishes. Discovered several years ago, it has been cooked often, gently tweaked, and shared widely.

The recipe is built in layers, with spices cooked slowly so their aromas bloom and deepen. That patient process creates a base that is rich and balanced rather than overpowering. The result is a curry that feels complex and full of character while remaining straightforward to cook. It is dependable, flexible, and deeply satisfying. A recipe you can trust, adjust, and make your own, whether cooking for one or feeding a table, and one you will return to again and again.

Just really good recipes

29. Indian inspired chicken curry - the last chicken curry recipe you will ever need!

This Indian chicken curry is truly the ONLY recipe you will ever need! I discovered it several years ago, and have since tweaked, and shared with multiple friends. It rightfully has a top spot in the winners circle…

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2 years ago · 77 likes · 10 comments · Sheryl O'Connell

Walnut and Cauliflower Curry

John Gonter - On Food without Compromise

John is a Maine guide who teaches wild food foraging, angling, and hunting, alongside the skills of processing, cooking, and preserving. Through his Substack, Food Without Compromise, he writes about cooking with wild foods and carefully chosen cultivated ingredients.

For Curry Night, John wanted something a little different and was drawn to a spicy walnut and cauliflower curry. He adapted the recipe to use a whole cauliflower, converted it to metric measures, and softened the heat with just a pinch of cayenne in place of Thai chillies. The result is a mild, subtly spiced curry that pairs beautifully with a range of foods. He has served it with prawns, slow-cooked wild turkey, and oyster mushrooms, each bringing a different character to the dish.

On Food Without Compromise

On Cooking: Walnut and Cauliflower Curry

I love curry. I like “mainstream” curries: yellow, red, green. And I usually like their regional variations. I also like “not so mainstream” curries…

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8 months ago · 19 likes · 5 comments · John Gonter

Slow Cooker Butternut Squash & Lentil Stew

Nicki Sizemore - Mind, Body, Spirit, FOOD

Nicki is the voice behind the Mind, Body, Spirit, Food newsletter and podcast, and the author of the cookbook of the same name. A longtime culinary instructor and recipe developer, she explores cooking as a grounding, joyful, and deeply nourishing practice, creating adaptable dishes that support both body and nervous system.

Nicki’s recipes invite cooks to slow down, tune in, and find pleasure in everyday meals. This slow-cooker vegetarian stew captures that approach beautifully. Tender winter squash, protein-rich lentils, and silky spinach are gently spiced with curry, ginger, and cinnamon. Finely chopped dried apricots add subtle sweetness, while an apricot–cashew gremolata and a cooling swirl of yogurt bring contrast, balance, and quiet delight.

Mind, Body, Spirit, FOOD

Slow Cooker Butternut Squash & Lentil Stew + Endings and Transformation

This slow cooker vegetarian stew is hearty yet light, featuring tender cubes of winter squash; protein-packed lentils; silky spinach; a gentle lace of curry, ginger and cinnamon; and finely chopped dried apricots (which are the secret ingredient, lending subtle sweetness). It gets topped with a crunchy-chewy apricot cashew gremolata and a swirl of cooli…

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2 years ago · 11 likes · 4 comments · Nicki Sizemore

Quick Curry in a Hurry

Mira Dessy - Mira Dessy on Substack

Mira, known as The Ingredient Guru, shares practical, science-based strategies for holistic wellness that are supportive, realistic, and easy to put into practice. Her work focuses on helping people feel their best without getting overwhelmed.

Some of Mira’s favorite meals begin as leftovers and end as something entirely new, not because they are elaborate, but because they solve a very human problem: how to eat well without repetition. This quick curry is one of those quiet kitchen wins. Using already-cooked chicken and a handful of pantry staples, it comes together in minutes and delivers comfort, depth, and nourishment. It’s a reminder that good food does not need to be complicated to be genuinely supportive.

Mira Dessy on Substack

Quick Curry In A Hurry

Some of my favorite meals start as leftovers and end as something completely new. Not because they’re fancy or complicated, but because they solve a very real, very human p…

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8 months ago · 3 likes · 3 comments · Mira Dessy

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Vegetable Curry and Easy Naan Bread

Monika Milewska - Pantry Diaries

Monika is a cook and food writer based in London, exploring her Polish heritage through food while building a career one recipe at a time. She stages in restaurant kitchens, cooks on yoga retreats, and hosts supper clubs at home, experiences that shape both her cooking and her connection to people through food.

Her Substack, Pantry Diaries, documents this journey, charting the move from passion to profession. This recipe grew from craving a curry takeaway on a tight budget and reflects the heart of her cooking. It is an affordable curry built around simple spices and seasonal vegetables, served with quick, pan-cooked naan finished with butter and garlic. The result is comforting, practical, and deeply satisfying, the kind of meal that makes cooking at home feel achievable and rewarding.

Pantry Diaries

Vegetable Curry & Easiest Naan Bread

*This post was originally written at the beginning of March 2025 so hence why references to Spring and asparagus in the recipe. Add any seasonal vegetables that are accessible to wherever you are…

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a year ago · 7 likes · Monika Milewska

Slow Cooker Chicken Curry

Therese Buchanan - Tessie’s Table

Tess is the creator behind Tessie’s Table. Born and raised in Ireland, she moved to Georgia in 2015 and now shares easy, flavor-forward recipes inspired by both her Irish roots and the realities of everyday cooking in her adopted home.

Through her Substack newsletter, Tess offers weekly dinner ideas, simple meal-planning inspiration, and practical, reliable recipes designed for busy days. Her cooking focuses on food that fits real life and actually gets made during the week.

Growing up in Ireland, chicken curry from Chinese takeaway shops was a regular Thursday-night ritual. After moving to Georgia and missing that familiar dish, Tess created her own slow-cooker version. It’s hands-off, cooks all day, and is ready by dinnertime—perfect for hectic weekdays.

Tessie’s Table

Monday Recipe Spotlight: Slow Cooker Chicken Curry

Chicken curry is one of the most common takeaway dinners where I grew up in Ireland, especially from Chinese restaurants. In our house, Thursday nights were always take-away (takeout) night. My dad did all the cooking at home during the week, but on Thursday, we ordered in, and chicken curry was always his favorite…

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8 months ago · 2 likes · 2 comments · Therese Buchanan

Coconut Curry Soup with Salmon

Stephanie Hansen - Stephaniesdish Newsletter

Stephanie is a two-time Emmy Award–winning food writer, broadcaster, and Midwest home cook. She hosts the Emmy Award–winning television show Taste Buds with Stephanie, writes the True North Cabin Cookbook series, and publishes recipes through her Substack and online platforms.

Stephanie cooks cozy, seasonal comfort food inspired by the vegetables she grows in her Ely Hilltop Garden in Ely, Minnesota. In January last year, after travelling through Cambodia, Thailand, and Vietnam and returning to sub-zero temperatures at home, she found herself craving soup. Drawing on memories of spicy broths, herbs, and vibrant flavours from her travels, she created this dish while finishing True North Cabin Cookbook Vol. 2.

Whether you call it a soup or a stew, it’s deeply satisfying served with rice and finished with herbs, peanuts, and a generous squeeze of lime.

Stephanie Hansen's @StephaniesDish Newsletter

Coconut Curry Soup with Salmon

Hello! Let’s start an ICEy January with some comfort food. Soup! I had some curry soup last night on vacation, and it reminded me that there is always room in the world, no matter where you are, for a comforting bowl of soup…

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8 months ago · 5 likes · 3 comments · Stephanie Hansen

Japanese Curries

Japanese Omu Rice

Aki moroto - Aki moroto Substack

Aki moroto is a chef by trade who has found a like-minded community on Substack, sharing a deep passion for all aspects of cooking. His writing draws on life lived between two cultures, years spent in professional kitchens, and food-centered travel experiences.

Each post is anchored by a recipe shaped by what surfaced during those moments. This curry omu rice is especially close to Aki’s heart. He discovered it during a period when he had hit a wall in life, and it became a source of comfort and grounding. He invites you to the table for buttery rice pilaf, a softly folded omelette, and a rich, spicy curry and hopes you’ll stay for the story as well.

Aki moroto

Wrapped with Love and Care; Japanese Curry Omu Rice

In these colder months, Stews are so soul warming and they are definitely welcomed. Each household, each culture has their own rendition of a big pot of stew that is the centerpiece of the table where we gather around to enjoy with our loved ones. Growing up, I always looked forward to Saturday’s dinner, which was 99% of the time- Japanese style Curry s…

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8 months ago · 23 likes · 22 comments · Aki moroto

Japanese-Style Vegetarian Curry

Betty Williams - Betty Eatz Newsletter

A light, bright riff on the popular Asian restaurant staple, this Japanese-style Vegetarian Curry is delish! Plus, it has several protein sources, including tofu, edamame, mushrooms, and bok choy, making it cozy and nutritious. The Betty Eatz Newsletter is devoted to the bright flavors of California Cuisine and publishes every Friday.

Betty Eatz Newsletter

Japanese-style Vegetarian Curry

Hello from sunny Southern California! If you like tacos, kimchi, seasonal produce, and bright flavors, you’re in the right place…

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8 months ago · 26 likes · 27 comments · Betty Williams

Chicken Katsu Curry

Kerry Faber - Dish Lister

Kerry is a professional recipe tester, helping home cooks cut through the culinary noise with reliable advice and recipes that never fail.

Chicken Katsu Curry is one of her favourite winter meals. A Japanese-style curry topped with a crisp fried chicken or pork cutlet, it is deeply comforting and satisfying. Rather than making the curry sauce from scratch, Kerry often uses boxed Japanese curry roux cubes, favouring the S&B brand for their balanced flavour and ease. They significantly reduce prep time, though traditional curry roux recipes are widely available for those who prefer to make their own.

Dish Lister

Katsu Curry: An All-Time Favorite Winter Meal

Welcome back to Dish Lister…

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2 years ago · 5 likes · Kerry Faber

Thai Curries

Firecracker Thai Red Curry Vegetables with Chicken

Ellen Kornmehl MD - Eating and Feeding

Ellen’s Eating and Feeding newsletter is about a food adventure for your future. Increasing the ratio of plant to animal protein is well supported in reducing heart disease risk, and one way to approach this is by flipping the plate. The Culinary Institute of America Protein Flip reframes meat or poultry as a complement rather than the main event, supporting both human and planetary health.

“One way I help my family adapt is by cooking familiar, takeout-style dishes centred on colourful vegetables. This Thai red curry does just that. It comes together quickly using red curry paste and a well-stocked produce drawer, with vegetables added in stages so greens and broccoli stay vibrant, sweet, and vegetal.”

Eating and Feeding

Eating and Feeding Briefs: The Magic Ratio, Trustworthy Turmeric, Firecracker Thai Red Curry Vegetables with Chicken

Eating and Feeding is a magazine-style publication designed to provide food for thought and restaurant-quality recipes that encourage more seasonal produce and fish—-more food adventure for your table…

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8 months ago · 35 likes · 26 comments · Ellen Kornmehl MD

Spaghetti Green Curry Sauce

Jess Valletta - Scone Archives

Jess of Scone Archives, knows her dinnertime defaults well. Noodles are non-negotiable. Daily nutrition calls for vegetables and protein. And when cravings demand something lush and comforting, curries and pasta are very much invited.

This recipe is a Thai–Italian fusion inspired by a vividly saucy green curry spaghetti she encountered in a Bangkok mall in May 2025. It’s a home-kitchen recreation designed for flexibility and pleasure. Twirl fork or chopsticks into aromatic, herb-laced spaghetti tossed with seared mushrooms, tofu, baby bok choy, tender cauliflower, and whatever vegetables are waiting in the fridge. A curry-forward, weeknight-ready dish that satisfies on every level.

scone archives

one order of spaghetti green curry 💚

Welcome back to the scone archives for a special edition ! fully written ! all access ! recipe + requisite culinary-centric memoirs, this time of the Thai-Italian curry persuasion. Rest assured that posts will return to the 2x-month regularity in February. <3…

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8 months ago · 14 likes · 9 comments · jess

Malaysian Curries

Malaysian Style Chicken Curry

Leslie Bulut - A Bite of Delight

Leslie Balut is the writer behind A Bite of Delight, where she shares globally inspired cooking designed for real home kitchens. Leslie believes that vibrant, nourishing food should be accessible without specialist equipment, hard-to-find ingredients, or a culinary degree.

Her cooking is shaped by more than a decade of exploring global cuisines, extensive travel, and a nomadic lifestyle that has taught her to cook creatively with whatever a local grocery store offers. That constraint, she says, has made her a better cook. Leslie’s recipes are carefully tested, practical, and joyful, built for weeknight dinners as much as for memorable shared meals.

For Curry Night, she shares her version of Malaysian chicken kari, a dish that reflects her approach: deeply aromatic, balanced, and achievable anywhere. It’s global cooking made generous, grounded, and doable.

A Bite of Delight

One Night in Malaysia, One Unforgettable Curry

Hi, I’m so glad you’ve stopped by. I’m Leslie, an enthusiastic cook and vagabond who loves making homestyle dishes from around the world…

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7 months ago · 8 likes · 5 comments · Leslie Bulut

A Full Sri Lankan Dinner or Lunch

Lisa McLean - Culinary Repertoire

Lisa McLean is the writer behind Culinary Repertoire, where spice-led cooking, cultural food history, and everyday kitchen practice meet evidence-based health. A clinical naturopath, nutritionist, medical herbalist, and registered nurse with over twenty years of experience, Lisa brings her professional lens to the table without losing sight of pleasure, tradition, and the realities of home cooking.

Her food writing is shaped by decades of travel and deep relationships with the cuisines of South and Southeast Asia, particularly Sri Lanka. For Curry Night, Lisa presents a full Sri Lankan meal, reflecting the way curries are traditionally cooked and eaten as part of a balanced, aromatic table rather than as stand-alone dishes. It is food built on restraint, layering, and intuition, where rice, sambols, vegetables, and slow-cooked curries work together in quiet harmony.

Culinary Repertoire

A Sri Lankan Table - Rice, Curry and Balance

A traditional Sri Lankan meal is built around balance rather than excess. Rice forms the anchor, coconut softens spice, curries move between heat and calm, and sambols sharpen the palate just enough to keep everything in conversation. In this post, I share a complete Sri Lankan curry night table: slow-cooked beef curry made with roasted curry powder, dh…

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8 months ago · 32 likes · 67 comments · Lisa McLean

Sri Lankan White Chicken Curry

Ranji Thangiah - Tooting Mama

Ranji Thangiah, aka Tooting Mama, is a food writer, photographer, and podcaster weaving Sri Lankan stories through food.

She grew up eating home-cooked Sri Lankan meals: vibrant curries, sambols, and mallungs prepared instinctively by her parents, guided by generations of embodied knowledge rather than written recipes. When her father passed away, his famous sweat-inducing black pork curry disappeared with him, severing a tangible thread to her heritage.

Ranji now treasures her parents’ cookbooks, especially a 1960s Ceylon Daily News Cookery Book that travelled with them to England. Through these pages and her growing Sri Lankan cookbook library, she is reclaiming this culinary legacy and exploring how Sri Lankan food carries stories of culture, colonialism, migration, war, and identity.

Her podcast Tea with Tooting Mama invites guests to share Sri Lankan connections through food, while her Substack celebrates the cuisine, people, and diaspora. She is also developing a Sri Lankan food walking tour through Tooting, London’s self-styled Little Sri Lanka.

Tooting Mama

A White Chicken Curry to Soothe, Heal, and Offer Sanctuary for a Hungry Soul

I was at a talk about Tamil food. Tamil rather than just Sri Lankan. Tamil food stretches far across the globe; following waves of migration, slavery voyages, communities that have had to flee war, and communities that have had to survive in war. This, most definitely, will be the subject of another post for another time…

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a year ago · 5 likes · Ranji Thangiah

Sri Lankan inspired Basic Curry Recipe

Lucy House - Healthy Farming Healthy Food

Lucy House writes Healthy Farming, Healthy Food. She is a farmer, permaculture practitioner, and home cook who believes that healthy soil grows healthy food, and healthy food supports healthy people.

Her approach, is essentially a permaculture lifestyle, centered on growing her own produce and sourcing local organic ingredients whenever possible. Lucy believes the quality of food begins in the soil and shows up on the plate.

Through her writing, she encourages people to cook simple, nourishing food from scratch and to reconnect with where their food comes from. The curry she is sharing is deliberately uncomplicated, relying on good-quality ingredients and a straightforward method. It reflects her food philosophy clearly: thoughtful sourcing, simple processes, and nutritious, satisfying meals.

Healthy Farming Healthy Food

Curry made simple

A few years ago, my sister was organising a potluck curry night and we were to bring a curry or a side. Being the organised person she is, she wanted to know who was bringing what, and I think her focus was on Thai style curries. I didn’t think it mattered, but I decided to bring a Sri Lankan style curry. By the way, some details of this may have been lost over the intervening years and I could be making some of this up. What I do remember about the event, was that it was a mortal sin in the food world of my sister to mix my cultures! Needless to say, I haven’t changed much…

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8 months ago · 6 likes · 13 comments · Lucy House

Thank you for joining us at the Curry Night table. This collection has been built with care, curiosity, and deep respect for the many ways curries are cooked, adapted, and loved.

We’re deeply grateful to the food writers who so generously contributed their work, each bringing a curry shaped by lived kitchens, cultural knowledge, and personal practice. We encourage you to explore their Substack publications and other writing, where you’ll find a richness of thought, craft, and generosity that extends far beyond this table.

If this post has inspired you, we’d love you to subscribe and follow our work here on Substack. Leaving a comment or liking the post helps keep the conversation alive, and sharing it with friends or restacking it makes it easier for other readers to discover this carefully curated collection and the wider body of work it sits within.

Annada D. Rathi and Lisa McLean

Subscribe to Lisa's Culinary Repertoire

Subscribe to ChutneyLovers

Hillary Dixler Caravan publishes a fantastic newsletter on Substack, What Are We Having. It is filled with tips, tricks and timesaving, delicious dinner ideas from chefs, food writers and culinary professionals. Subscribe and you will not have to cook separate meals for your kids – don’t get me wrong, but how many times in a week can you have plain pasta.

Most importantly I admire the way she treats her recipe contributors. I am speaking from personal experience as I have the pleasure of contributing a recipe for January’s Lunch Box Month. My recipe appears in What are We Having on Jan 21^st. Thank you, Hillary!

Subscribe to What Are We Having

Jump to recipe of Spinach Moong Dal

I will never get tired of singing praises of Dal Chawal. Arguably the national dish of India, it is the comfort food and sustenance of billions. It is a meal my husband can eat on repeat and something I go back to when my mind is fried and want the food to make me feel good. If you can believe me, my husband can actually eat plain Dal and Chawal for ALL the meals (Plain dal is my terminology for cooked pigeon peas seasoned with a tadka of ghee, black mustard seeds, asafetida and sliced green chile peppers, finished with a squeeze of lime juice). But that’s not me, I can be a cranky temperamental diva in endless pursuit of variety in my everyday food. Someone’s piping in with a rhetorical question (YKIYK) – only in food?

But seriously, with the awe-inspiring breadth of legume universe and the infinite ways in which they transform into dals, I have no reason to ever become cranky. My quest for comfort as well as variety is easily satisfied within the cosmic Dal universe. To give you an example, a few years back, on a trip to Uttarakhand, for the first time I had the state’s staple dal called Gahat, aka kulthi or horse gram. Paired with rice, it bestowed the same comfort and satiety, that I am used to with familiar dals.

Let me give you a quick scope of beans, peas, lentils that I know, which seamlessly turn into dals. This list is by no means comprehensive. At any minute, I can imagine the IAPF (remember, the Indian Aunties Police Force?) knocking me on my head, “That’s all? Is that what we taught you?”

Types of legumes I have cooked/am familiar with

• Split Pigeon Peas; toor dal (both the lentil and the cooked preparation are called dal) – Dal prepared every day at my parents’, in-laws’ and many houses in Western India

• Split Yellow Moong dal – What we are going to prepare today. The second quickest to cook after masoor dal or red lentils

• Split Urad Dal or black lentils – A vital ingredient for dosa and idli, it makes a killer dal seasonally suitable for winter. This lentil gives the weightless, airy quality to the idlis.

• Split Chana Dal or split chickpeas or Bengal Gram – ingredient for Vadas (not the Vada of Vada Pav) and an ethereal Lauki Chana Dal

• Whole Mung beans – makes savory dosas as well as dal

• Whole Masur or brown lentils – another quick-cooking dal for busy evenings when dinner needs to be prepared in a crunch

• Whole Urad Dal – my Guru calls it the king of Dals. It is popular in North and East India during winter

• Kala Chana or Brown chickpeas – makes dal and a snack. Important component of Pani Puri

• Lobhia or Black Eyed Peas – This stew straddles the line gracefully between dal and curry

• Rajma or Kidney Beans – Rajma, Chawal is a comfort food of many in North India

• Chhole or Chickpeas – One of the favorite dishes ordered in Indian restaurants

• Dried Green or white peas - White peas are the ingredient in Mumbai’s street food, Ragda Pattice

• Horse gram or Kulith – The new entrant in my list, thanks to my trip to Uttarakhand.

And here are the ways that I know to prepare them –

• Simple tadka of ghee, mustard, cumin seeds and sliced green chile peppers

• Seasoned with onions roasted in the tadka

• Seasoned with onions and tomatoes roasted in the tadka

• Dal with greens like spinach, fenugreek leaves, purslane, colocasia, roselle, amaranth

• Seasoned with tamarind and jaggery

• Seasoned like sambhaar with tamarind, score of vegetables and sambhaar masala

Phew! Forgive me IAPF, if I have erred!

RECiPE – SPiNaCH MoONG DaL

If you are a newbie to cooking lentils, split moong dal is a great introduction. Split moong dal broth is often the first non-milk food fed to babies and Indian moms and aunties love it because it cooks fast and tastes super. An ingredient of khichdi, moong dal is easy to digest even for toddlers, senior citizens and patients.

Serves 2

InGrediEnts

• 1/2 cup split yellow moong dal

• 2 cups tightly packed spinach leaves (3.5-4 oz) or 2.5 oz frozen spinach thawed and liquid squeezed by twisting in a clean kitchen towel

• 2 tablespoons scraped and finely diced ginger (don’t peel the ginger, scrape for maximum yield)

• 2 tablespoons vegetable or coconut oil

• 1/4 teaspoon black mustard seeds

• 1/4 teaspoon cumin seeds

• 1 green chile pepper destemmed and cut into thin slices (optional)

• 1 big tomato chopped into pieces, 1/2” x 1/2”

• 1/2 teaspoon turmeric powder

• 1 pinch sugar

• 1/4 teaspoon kashmiri red chile powder (optional)

• 1 teaspoon coriander powder

• 3/4 teaspoon salt

• 1 teaspoon lime juice

MeThod

• Wash the moong dal under running water and discard the water. Repeat this several times till the water you discard is not foggish white anymore. Soak and set aside for 15 minutes.

• Chop the spinach fine. Make sure you don’t cut long ribbons as these ribbons will cook down into annoying, slithering, wilted strands in the final dish. This is exactly the reason why spinach in a salad does not thrill me. Set aside.

• Discard the soaked water of the moong dal and transfer to a pot. Pour 3 cups water, stir in 2 tablespoons diced ginger and heat the dal on medium heat.

• Meanwhile on the other burner, place a small sauté pan on medium heat. Add 2 tablespoons vegetable or coconut oil.

• Wait for the oil to shimmer, about 2-2.5 minutes and add 1/4 teaspoon black mustard seeds and 1/4 teaspoon cumin seeds.

• Enjoy hearing the dulcet tones of the tadka. Once the seeds stop popping, put the green chile pepper slices carefully.

• Stir for a minute and follow-up with tomatoes and 1/2 teaspoon turmeric powder. Immediately add a pinch of sugar to speed up the tomato breakdown. Add 1/4 teaspoon kashmiri red chile powder, 1 teaspoon coriander powder and 3/4 teaspoon salt.

• Pay attention to the moong dal cooking. You will see that after about 15 minutes the dal will start foaming. Scoop the foam out with a ladle and discard. No need to agonize about getting the last bit.

• Now get back to your tomato mixture. In 5-6 minutes, the tomatoes will lose their moisture and start secreting oil. Toss in chopped spinach. Mix well. Turn the heat off when spinach wilts and integrates nicely into the tomato mixture. This should not take more than 4-5 minutes. Turn the heat off.

• After the dal has been cooking for 30-35 minutes, add 3/4 cup water and whisk it so the cooked lentils disintegrate and transform into a smooth liquid. Check out the wooden Indian whisk!

• Combine the spinach and tomato mixture into the cooked dal and mix well. Pour 1 teaspoon lime juice, mix and turn the heat off after 5 minutes.

RECiPE - PaN-FriEd GreeN ChiLe PePpers

Green peppers are crucial for Indian kitchens. Sliced, they season the tadka (like in our dal today), crushed, they become a hot, hot condiment, raw and by themselves, they are a shot of heat for the heat fiends and stuffed, they become a side dish. All the mysteries of peppers are yet to be revealed to the mankind.

I learned to make these pan fried, spiced peppers from my Guru. On the plate in 10 minutes, these ground coriander and turmeric smothered green peppers offer an errant, hot flavor. It is a lovely contrast against the prim and proper dal chawal.

InGrediEnts

• 4-5 thin skinned green chile peppers like shishitos, finger or long greens, banana peppers

  

• 3 tablespoons oil

• 1/4 teaspoon salt

• 1/2 teaspoon coriander powder

• 1/4 teaspoon turmeric powder\

• 1 pinch asafetida (optional)

MeThod

• Cut the peppers lengthwise without cutting them into two pieces. Now cut the peppers crosswise into 2’-long pieces.

• Pour 3 tablespoons oil in a small wok and heat on medium

• After 2-2.5 minutes or as the oil starts shimmering

• Carefully add half the pepper pieces and stir

• The peppers will start acquiring white blisters. In 4-5 minutes, these blisters will become uniform.

• Take the pan-fried peppers out in a bowl.

• Repeat the process with the rest of the peppers.

• Mix 1/4 teaspoon salt, 1/2 teaspoon coriander powder and 1/4 teaspoon turmeric powder and 1 pinch asafetida with the peppers.

• These peppers will last for 2 days at least.

• Do not discard the remaining oil. Use it as the beginning oil for a soup or a stew.

Serve Spinach Moong Dal with rice of your choice (if there is white rice, is there even a choice?) and pan-fried chile peppers.

Next week it will be one year since ChutneyLovers published its first recipe post. Thank you for your comments, restacks; thank you for being there, my dear subscribers. The mysteries of Indian flavors are boundless so let’s travel together on delicious ride. The next post presents 11 tips to master Indian flavors.