#rozkakhana series Jump to Recipe My earliest memories of cape gooseberry or rasbhari as they're called in India go back to moving ramshackle carts where these berry fruits were sold. As soon as the vendor would call aloud and announce his arrival, mother and I would hustle out of the house, carrying some loose change to pay for dozens of boxes of the golden berries. Cape gooseberries are summer days bundled in translucent wings and wrapped in a hue of yellow. Tart, but not too much, beaded with seeds like a million miniscule pearls. Tiny cousins of grape tomatoes, I call them sometimes. They're the apple of my eye and the ruler of my heart all through the year and not just summer. We ate them plain but a big batch was also put aside for pickles. I used to pop a bunch into my mouth while they were still being washed and readied for use in achaar (pickle)! There's a fruit stand in downtown Whitehorse where a lady sells fresh produce starting late spring and all through summer. Needless to say I'm a frequent visitor of her shop. Last year in autumn, the lady was an angel in disguise for she had surplus boxes on the day before she was closing the shop for winter. What do you think I did? Bought everything of course! And, what did I do with them other than stuffing my mouth (I bet you can't stop at one)? I used them in a variety of things. Salads, custards, cakes and a special flaugnarde. For those of you who haven't tried it before, it's a French dessert where fruits are layered in a buttered dish, a flan-like batter is poured on top and baked until the fruits are smudgy and oozy while the batter cooks to become something like a 'puddingy' pancake. Easy but I find it on the too-sweet side for my taste. I know that the husband adores all such desserts, be it a calfoutis, a meringue or a pavlova, and seeing him relish this flaugnarde with the eagerness of a child was the highlight of my baking expedition. My favourite however is a rasbhari chutney. Chutneys, jams or pickles are my most preferred way of using berries, fruits or vegetables so they last long after their season is gone. These beautiful fruits can grow in varied conditions and withstand long shipping and storage. Knock knock! I got a huge batch at the close of summer from the fruit stand and relished the chutney all through autumn! I'm a tad bit amazed (in a disappointed way) they aren't widely available. But, if you find them, please buy! Physalis Peruviana—botanical name of this marble sized fruit — is native to tropical highlands in Peru (does Peruviana in it's botanical name ring a bell?), Ecuador and Columbia. Although found and sold in these countries, apparently it hasn't been traditionally a cash crop in South America. Cultivated in England as early as 1774, South Africa (Cape of Good Hope, it's namesake) in 1807 and Hawaii in 1825, this orangish yellow coloured sphere of bomb flavour has disseminated throughout the world. It probably made its way to India through Rio de Janeiro, though exact dates are unknown. The last of my gooseberry baskets from the fruit stand were turned into this oh-so-delicious chutney! Call it an instant pickle if you will. Add panch phoran—a combination of equal parts of cumin, mustard, fenugreek, nigella and fennel seeds—and red chili to oil, then add the fruits. Let it simmer, add a little jaggery and salt. Keep simmering at low to medium heat till you're happy with the consistency. Turn off the heat and add some vinegar. Pour into jar, seal and keep in cool place or refrigerate. Done! Slather on a toast, chuck it with khichdi, scoop with paratha or dip a cracker in! Make a hearty batch; mine lasted hardly a week. You got it! I'm a crazy chutney lover, and the husband relishes every bit of my signature chutneys. Pro Tip: There is only one tip for this chutney—don't overdo it! I let the cape gooseberries simmer only until they have shriveled. I mash a few with the spatula and keep many intact. This ensures a good consistency for the chutney. You may choose to not cook the cape gooseberries at all. Just make the jaggery and spice concoction along with salt. Let it simmer till you get a flowy consistency and then pour it on the raw fruits along with vinegar. Seal in a jar and store! You may want to keep them in the sun for 3-4 days before eating in this case. Recipe Did you check the pro tip? Ingredients 2 cups of cape gooseberry, husk removed and washed 1 tbsp oil 1 tsp panch phoron - equal parts of cumin, mustard, fenugreek, nigella and fennel seeds 2-3 dry red chili or 1 tsp red chili powder 2-3 tsp jaggery or jaggery powder (depending on how sweet you want the chutney to be/substitute with sugar) 1 tsp salt or to taste 1 tsp vinegar Method In a pan, heat oil on medium heat and add panch phoron. Once they crackle, add chili and stir. Immediately add the cape gooseberries and stir again. Reduce the heat and let the fruits simmer and shrivel. Once the fruits are soft and start losing shape, add jaggery and salt. Let the jaggery melt. Stir to combine everything. Keep simmering at low to medium heat till you're happy with the consistency. Turn off the heat and add vinegar. Pour into jar, seal and keep in cool place to store or refrigerate (after it has cooled down) for longer shelf life.

#rozkakhana series Jump to Recipe At its core, a chorchori or charchari is a mix vegetable preparation in the Bengali cuisine. It brings together a few vegetables in a wok or pan along with an easy tempering and results in a one-pot dish with little or no addition of water. It's also handy when you have dinky bits of different vegetables, aptly described as "fridge-cleaning" in the contemporary world. In my cooking journey of fifteen years so far, I had once the luxury of having a cook at home. After moving to Bangalore, I initially lived with sister M. Following a year of gruesome commute, I moved closer to work and there burgeoned the true life of independent living. We were four girls renting an apartment in the far flung locality of Whitefield—the land of concrete decked with high rises of IT companies. While I was always willing to cook for all of us, my housemates found it too much of a chore for me alone. So, we decided to hire someone to cook for us and I happily took over the responsibility to task the cook everyday and keep track of the grocery. J, our cook, was somewhat stout, always adorning a pair of shakha-pola on her wrists and a bindi on her forehead, occasionally a paan stuffed in the corner of her mouth and forever wearing a smile on her face. She called me didi, meaning elder sister, although she was elder to me, and I called her the same, didi. No matter how much I asked, she would not call me by my name. Didi meant respect, and she never agreed to call me anything else! Didi J was my soulmate in that kitchen in Bangalore. With a stock full of stories and a knack for cooking a variety of dishes, she never ran out of banter. Despite the shocks of migration from Bangladesh, a grim family scene and stunted finances, a drunk husband and a daughter left far away in the village to have a sheltered life, Didi J could always make people smile with her talk and her food. Although a Bengali, she cooked all kinds of Indian food. Idlis, parathas, dhokla, you name it! I loved the Bong murgirir laal jhol (chicken in a thin red gravy), kochu bata (mashed taro), mochar ghonto (banana blossom preparation) and shorshe ilish (hilsa fish in mustard) she made but what I relished the most were her chorchoris or charcharis. There are many variants of chorchori, the difference being the tempering and no strict regime for what vegetables to use. The name of the chorchori will denote the constituent vegetables or the tempering used in it. The vegetables... It's extremely flexible in terms of what vegetables to use. Not restricted by strict recipes, its taste is attributed to the art of chopping the constituent vegetables, pairing them appropriately and layering them with minimal spices with a glug of mustard oil. All vegetables in a chorchori are chopped in a similar fashion to ensure uniform cooking. The vegetables that take longest to cook go first into the kadhai followed by the ones that take less time. Slices of pumpkin, chunks of eggplants, handful of greens and dices of stems or roots like drumsticks and taro are some of the oldest vegetables used in a chorchori. Some other popular vegetables used in a chorchori are ridge gourd, drumsticks, pointed gourd, brinjal, hyacinth beans and potatoes. Bitter gourds, sweet potatoes, carrots and cauliflower (stems as well as leaves) are also readily used. Although a chorchori is primarily vegetarian, fish is also included in some varieties. Small fish like chanda, tengra, morola, bele, kochki, shrimps work really well with vegetables in a chorchori. The tempering... Didi J cooked it in many ways. She sometimes added paanch phoron along with dried red chilies and bay leaves. She also made a version with a tempering of nigella seeds alone, and added pounded ginger and green chili. This particularly is my favourite! At times, she made it with only asafoetida (hing). This variety is subtle and gets a bit of kick with a few green chilies. Another tempering is with plain mustard seeds, and sometimes a mustard paste, shorshe bata and bori (dried lentil dumplings). Mustard oil provides a distinct taste to chorchori and the texture is defined by the cuts of the vegetables. This style of cooking vegetables is akin to the Odia chadchadi although the tempering in that often includes garlic, not always necessarily. A chorchori or charchari is a Bengali story of extremes, one that ranges from extravagance to resourcefulness. To understand how, we need to go slightly deeper into India's past. Chorchori and Bengal's excesses... With an area of 228,000 square kilometers, undivided Bengal consisted of East Pakistan or Bangladesh and the state of West Bengal in India today. Renowned for its fertile soil, paddy production and rivers which were inexhaustible sources of a variety of fish, Bengal was one of the wealthiest regions of the subcontinent. While Bengalis are usually associated with a fish and rice diet—owing to the abundance of both in the region—the Bengali cuisine is rich in several vegetarian dishes. In a Conde Nast Traveller article, food historian Pritha Sen says, "Bengal was the land of greens and gourds." With the rise of Vaishnava Bhakti cult (worshipping the Hindu god Vishnu) in 14th-15th century Bengal, vegetarian cooking found new dimensions, so much that dal got a place in the meal as a replacement of meat and fish. Even before this juggernaut movement which became stronger and popular with the followers of Sri Chaitanya, the Hindu widows among the Brahmin and Kayastha castes are believed to have pioneered many vegetarian dishes including chorchori. The regressive patriarchy made them abstain from onion, garlic, pungent spices, meat and fish, all of which were categorized as foods that could boost sex drive. Sen further explains, “Yes, it’s true a lot of our vegetarian food was perpetuated because of widows. All families had widowed relatives living them. Therefore, vegetarian food was a constant. But the repertoire did not happen because of them. The myth that they originated from them was started for sensationalism.” A chorchori also exemplifies easy cooking catering to the needs of large families. Whethr made with vegetables or including fish, a chorchori with some rice and occasional dal is sufficient for a meal. It was also a means to utilize the energy used in cooking. Consider the bati chorchori. Raw vegetables were laid out in a bowl or bati and raw mustard oil was added on top. A lid was placed over this bowl and left to be slow cooked in the dying embers of a wood fire. This mirrors the Odia cooking technique of Bati Basa. There is another school of thought that describes a slightly different style of cooking a bati chorchori. The vegetables are first cooked normally in a kadhai just as a chorchori would be made, and then the heat is turned off. The vegetables from the kadhai are mixed with green chilli, mustard and poppy seed paste and raw mustard oil, stuffed in a bowl and steamed for a few minutes. Irrespective of the origin and the variants, chorchori in pre-British Bengal was a celebration of the fresh produce, heaving with the abundance of vegetables growing in the Ganga delta. The face of chorchori underwent changes during economic crisis and famines in Bengal in the 17th and 19th centuries. Chorchori and Bengal's poverty... Under the British Raj the Indian subcontinent was robbed for 200 years spiking the economy with repeated famines. It was the oppressive British taxation that caused the famines and not the lack of food. A British Indian government famine inspector, William Digby, explains in his book, Prosperous British India: A Revelation from Official Records, how an insurance fund against famine at one and a half million a year was added to the taxation of the country. The subcontinent was made to pay a portion of the expenses for an unnecessary war in Afghanistan and how the insurance sum was expanded over the years for railways and other communications, as if the railways were a solution for the famines and as though the most tragic famines had not occurred in provinces well supplied with railways! Like Digby, Surgeon Major Francis Day, Inspector General of Fisheries in India was also ignored who reported to the profit hungry British government that the fishermen burdened by taxation preferred to starve than go about their daily job of fishing. Emperor Akbar who had abolished numerous other taxes had kept the land tax to one-third. With the Mughal empire falling apart, the nawabs and rajas not only raised the land tax but revived the taxes that had been discontinued and brought in more exacerbating taxes. The East India Company happily continued the trend, raising the land tax to its highest in the history of the subcontinent. With the monopoly over trade, they now dictated the prices of goods sold and bought. Robert Clive of the East India Company dislodged Mughal emperor Shah Alam in 1765 with the signing of the Treaty of Allahabad after the Battle of Buxar, seizing the Diwani rights, right to collect taxes on behalf of the emperor from the eastern province of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa in return of securing the districts of Kora and Allahabad for the emperor. The taxes trebled within five years and in the Great Bengal famine of 1769-1773, a third of the population of Bengal died. Even after this, the company continued to increase its taxes. With people becoming less able to pay taxes and the fact that the government cannot run without revenue, Lord Cornwallis introduced the Zamindari System under his Permanent Settlement Act in 1793 which brought in intermediaries called as zamindars, mahalwars, ryotwars who were made land owners and rented their lands to peasants who cultivated on their land. The East India Company owned the 10/11 of the rent (land tax collected by zamindars) while the zamindars kept only 1/11 of the share, heavily impoverishing the peasants. This zamindari system was different than the system under the Mughals because the latter did not make zamindars the land owners neither did it allow lands to be taken away from the peasants unless they paid the rent. Like many other parts of India, a large portion of Bengal was sacrificed for the zamindars of the British Government in captive India. Author and physician Manoshi Bhattacharya mentions in a DailyO article: India, which is reckoned to have accounted for a quarter of global manufacturing before the British traders arrived, was reduced to just 3% of world GDP by the dawn of the 20th century. Bengal silver funded Britain's Industrial Revolution which began to flood the markets of India with British products. At this point of time, chorchori was no longer a prodigal vegetarian extravaganza. Women honed their skills to use whatever was available to make chorchori practicing the philosophy of root-to-shoot or nose-to-tail cooking. Everything was used from piles of scrapped vegetable skins, fish bones and scales, nugatory seeds of the opium poppy that had overhauled their lands (thanks to the British again), to pulverized mustard seed remnants outside oil mills, keeping the families alive on frugal meals. In 1943, Bengal was hit by another famine. Didi J used to recall the many charcharis of those days, khosa chorchori made with only vegetable peels and the kaanta chorchori that used fish bones and fish head or the dal chorchori made with masoor dal. These days we add a variety of vegetables to the kaanta chorchori, but it was not always the case then. It could be just onions or potatoes with some mustard. Even after the partition and India's independence in 1947, life continued to be complicated for the common people. It wasn't that a paper drawn line solved the centuries of decay from the British exploitation. Born in the late 1960s, Didi J struggled with her family's continuous tussles with fate and political leaders' apathy. Her widowed grandmother went foraging for wild greens while her mother cooked rice which was usually not enough for everyone. In a dilapidated house, her mother would sit on a platter in the shoddy kitchen, mixing boiled rice with the charchari of the day, making balls and feeding Didi J and her siblings. With the family fed to some extent, the mother and grandmother would often sleep on empty stomachs, fanning themselves with the loose ends of their sarees under a dimming lantern. Cooking a khosa or kaanta chorchori, Didi J would cajole in her sweet broken Hindi,"Kochu ke jaise hum log Bangladesh se yahan aa gaya didi, lekin jeebon obhi bhi wohi hai. Wohi charchari aaj bhi banata didi. Kintu dusre ka badi mein nei. Aapko itna pasand, shei karon aapke badi mein banata."...."We wriggled out of Bangladesh just as a taro root grows but life is the same. I make the same charchari didi but not in other people's homes. You like it so much, so I make it in your house." Whether using fresh vegetables or discarded peels, stems or roots or bones, a chorchori celebrates the ingredients, unbridling their secret tastes and flavours. Didi J taught me well and here I'm sharing a version which is one of the easiest and the most minimalistic chorchori. Pro Tip: The only tip for a good chorchori is to cut all vegetables in similar shapes and sizes. You can cut them in wedges and slices or keep them as large chunks. Whatever you do, chopping them fine will not yield a chorchori. It will become a bhorta or a paste while the vegetables are cooked! Begin with the hardest vegetable, the one that takes the longest to cook. Toss or cover and cook for a few minutes and then add the vegetables in descending order of toughness or cooking time. There are different types of tempering used in a chorchori, and you may use any as you wish. In this specific recipe, I've used nigella seeds, mustard oil, some asafoetida and a blob of pounded ginger and green chili. You make it with nigella seeds and mustard oil only. Garam masala or whole spices are traditionally not added to chorchoris although some recipes in the internet may call upon their use. Recipe Did you check the pro tip? Ingredients 2 small eggplants, sliced into wedges or batons 2 potatoes, sliced into wedges (you can keep the skin on as well) Stalks of a cauliflower, thinly sliced Leaves of cauliflower, as is 1-2 small carrots, cut into batons 10-12 beans (French or broad beans), cut into slender poles Note: The vegetables mentioned are for reference. You can use any other vegetables per availability. For tempering: 2 tbsp mustard oil, 1-2 dry red chilies, 1 tsp nigella seeds, a pinch of asafoetida, 1/2 inch ginger plus 1 green chili pounded Or 2 tbsp mustard oil, 1-2 dry red chilies, 1 tsp mustard seeds or paanch phoron (equal parts of mustard, cumin, fenugreek, nigella and fennel seeds) 1 tsp turmeric 1 tsp salt, or to taste Note: A lot of chorchori recipes that use cauliflower stalks (these are best in winter as the stalks are tender then), especially the ones from East Bengal, include mustard paste. The mustard paste provides a characteristic flavour and identity to the chorchori. I've not used it here as I prefer to make that version with cauliflower stalks, brinjal, broad beans and pumpkin. To make mustard paste, soak 1 tbsp black and 1 tbsp yellow mustard for an hour and grind fine with green chilies and water. Method Place a pan or wok on medium to low heat and add mustard oil. Heat it to smoking point and then add the dry red chilies. Once they puff up, add nigella seeds and then add asafoetida. Begin with the hardest vegetable. In this case, I added the cauliflower stalks first. Sauté for 3 minutes and then add the potatoes. Stir intermittently for about 3 minutes again. You may reduce the heat or add splashes of water if you find anything sticking to the bottom. Next add carrots and continue sautéing for the next 2-3 minutes. Mix the vegetables and toss them around the pan or wok. Next add the beans, mix and cook for 3 minutes again. The vegetables must be about 50% cooked by now. Add salt and turmeric and stir to combine. Add a few splashes of water if needed, reduce the heat and cover and cook for 5 minutes. Open the pan and then add the eggplants. Give a good mix and add the pounded ginger and green chilies. Stir to combine. Sauté for 5 minutes or until the eggplants are soft but hold their shape. Switch off the heat. Serve with steamed rice and dal topped with lime wedges.

#rozkakhana series Jump to Recipe A simple dish of green leafy vegetables cooked with chickpeas is an excellent example of how simple cooking techniques and fresh seasonal ingredients are hallmarks of the daily menus in Punjabi households and Indian homes at large. Made with very few spices, this dish, is quite different from its meaty counterpart and sheds light on how food evolves and travels and gets recreated from memories. The combination of the words, panj meaning five and ab meaning waters in Persian, makes the name Punjab. Punjab as we know today is a smaller fragment of a large region in northern India fed by five rivers (the Beas, Sutlej, Chenab, Ravi and Jhelum) which kept its soils fertile, making it rich and prosperous. Located strategically on the Silk Route, it witnessed many convoys and caravans loaded with textiles, spices, indigo, sugar, rice and implausible luxuries travelling to the Bukhara and Isfahan markets beyond the Caucasus Mountains, who took with them the tales of the undivided land of Punjab. Those passing stories of Punjab's glory also brought invasions and attacks from its neighbours, conquests that lasted for centuries—from Darius and Alexander of Greece and Timur, the Scythians, Turks, Afghans and Mughals from Central Asia—and left their mark on its food, people and culture. The British followed the Mughals, although much later, and dealt with legendary rulers of Punjab like Maharana Ranjit Singh, again influencing its food. The Punjabi cuisine has evolved over the years, and it's not one but many culinary styles melded into one. Continuing from the Indus Valley Civilization, one of the oldest in the world, the food of Punjab holds nuances of Persian, Afghani and Central Asian cooking, the fare of the North West Frontier Province—Khyber Pakhtunkhwa as its known today—and a sway of Kashmir through trade and marriage alliances. The modern day Punjabi food in India is largely the food of eastern part of the undivided Punjab (like Ambala, Amritsar, Patiala, Ludhiana, Kapurthala) of the past along with all that the migrants brought with them from the western part that remained in Pakistan (like Lahore, Peshawar, Karachi, Rawalpindi) after partition and their many re-creations to relive the memories of their homelands left behind. The long, though turbulent but vibrant history of Punjab contributes much to its food identity. However the food that's popular as Punjabi food commercially is only a fraction of the entire cuisine and very different from what's cooked in Punjabi homes. My journey with Punjabi food... On a dry summer day in Bombay, I had stepped out of an autorickshaw, the strap of my satchel going around my chest to my back, and glanced at the window above my head. Auntie A was peaking from inside, clad in her cotton Punjabi salwar kurta, spectacles sliding on her nose and hands stuck on the grille. She had been waiting for this girl with the satchel to be her first paying guest. Renting a room in your house to a stranger—a concept that was alien to both auntie and me initially—turned out to be a lifelong relationship of friendship and love that got better with time, and food. This was my firsthand acquaintance with Punjabi food—not what you eat in the restaurants, but what is cooked in a Punjabi household on an everyday basis. While I watched and helped auntie—a sexagenarian who did many chores—as the sous chef in the kitchen, she sometimes talked about the pre-partition Punjab, fuzzy images of her then home often prominent in her remembering, the fleeing of her family members from Lahore and Karachi to Bombay in 1947. She would abruptly stop and move on to the kitchen scene at hand. It was almost like a sudden force from within that ceased her from narrating, evading the pain. Auntie would divert, "us zamane ke baare mein kya baat karni." What to talk about that time? It was amidst those inadvertent mentions that she also talked about murgh chole (chicken with chickpeas), a dish that came from the other side of the border to Punjab in India along with the refugees and their tandoors, a precursor to the no-meat saag chole (greens with chickpeas), also known as saag chana, she taught me to cook. Auntie was a vegetarian, so saag chole was naturally her inclination. Kabuli and Kala Chana... Chickpeas, world's oldest and second most widely cultivated legume after soybean, have been growing in India and Pakistan from time immemorial. The local variety popular in these countries is the kala chana or desi chana, which is smaller in size with a darker skin than the variety known as garbanzo beans. The bigger lighter coloured garbanzo beans are called kabuli chana in India, the name implicitly pointing that the variety came from Kabul, Afghanistan. Auntie used either to make saag chole, although the white version usually blended well in the flavours of the green leaves. More on Auntie style saag chole... East Punjab before partition which is now the present day state of Punjab in India has always been the bread basket of the country and growing ground to a variety of vegetables and greens. It isn't a surprise that in this vegetarian part of Punjab, the murgh chole from Lahore got a makeover with fresh winter greens as saag chole. Saag is a Hindi word for a category of all leafy greens, of which spinach, mustard, fenugreek and radish greens are used extensively in Punjab. A state where agrarian life dominates the scene, harvested greens or saag are at their best in winters and often cooked as a concoction, also called as saag, wth minimal spices and topped with ghee. Behold the famous sarson ka saag (mustard greens) and makke ki roti (corn flatbread)! To this mixed green saag, Auntie would add boiled chole and let the mixture slowly cook to a thick consistency. The tadka was typically Punjabi, consisting of onions, tomatoes, ginger, garlic and green chilies, but much lighter than the murgh chole, first cooked in dhabas by migrants who moved from Pakistan to India and had inherently cooked this in eateries in Lahore. The saag chole most likely could have a similar 'dhaba-origin' and simplified in home kitchens although there isn't concrete documentation. Auntie's version had no whole spices, no elaborate sautéing of onions and tomatoes, no cream or yogurt. It was understated, and extremely unpretentious, just how home cooking should be. Green tomatoes and tomatillos... What made Auntie's saag chole unique was that she used green tomatoes in the gravy. Those green tomatoes were essentially the red tomatoes that hadn't ripened, and sometimes the varieties that stay green after ripening. They are usually available in the market during early spring in India and during autumn in the western world when the air is crisp and not warm enough for the tomatoes to ripen further. The combination of fresh greens and green tomatoes explains the importance given to seasonal bounty and clean eating in households. Green tomatoes are quite firm and acidic, and hold up well for slicing, dicing and frying. Their acidity and sourness mellows when cooked, making them ideal ingredients where you want a good balance of astringency and crunch. According to nutritionist and author, Nandita Iyer, who writes a fortnightly column for Mint Lounge: Tomatoes are rich in alkaloids like solanine and tomatine, some of which are considered slightly toxic in very high doses. In this case, the toxicity could cause acidity, stomach discomfort or headaches in sensitive people. These alkaloids are heat resistant and will not get deactivated on cooking. As the fruit ripens, the toxicity in the alkaloids drops. In Canada, I encountered tomatillos, a fruit which is easily confused with green tomatoes, thanks to the Spanish translation which means "little tomato." Belonging to the same family of their golden look alike, cape gooseberry, these fruits are native to Mexico and are sometimes called husk tomatoes. They're available all year around, although their prime season is from early summer through fall. Slightly more acidic and less sweet than both ripe and unripe tomatoes, and denser and less watery on the inside, they are ideal substitutes for green tomatoes. Like green tomatoes, their acidity also tones down when cooked. Once I started cooking saag chole with tomatillos, there has been no looking back. They taste extremely good with the greens and chickpeas cooked in mustard oil, imparting a distinct subtle tartness. Here as the season favours, I whip up a pot of saag chole with tomatillos in spring and summer and with green tomatoes in fall and winter, although the saag always tastes best between autumn and spring. The Punjabi saag auntie made was a combination of greens rather one. Here, I oscillate between mixed leaves and only spinach depending on the season and availability. Pro Tip: The only point to keep in mind for this dish is to not complicate it! I advise strongly against overwhelming it with spices. Coriander and turmeric are the flag bearer spices in Punjabi home cooking, and they're pretty much the dominant spices in this dish too. In the absence of green tomatoes or tomatillos, you could use regular red tomatoes. The taste will be slightly sweeter, but you can add some amchur (dry mango powder) for additional sourness. Traditionally, the saag that's popular in the Punjabi food repertoire or any other cuisine in India is never ground in a blender to make a puree! For a fine gravy-like texture, the greens are chopped extensively fine and for a rustic sabji-like structure, they are chopped bigger. I chop all the greens as finely as I can, and make a puree of a handful of greens which helps retain and impart a good green colour in the overall dish after the whole thing is cooked. For the best flavour, I recommend mustard oil, but you may substitute with any other oil if you wish. Recipe Did you check the pro tip? Ingredients 1 bunch of spinach along with handful of any other greens of your choice, chopped fine (fenugreek leaves, radish leaves, mustard leaves work great) Note: You may use only spinach too 1/4 cup greens pureed 1/2 cup chickpeas soaked overnight or at least 5 hours 1 small red onion, chopped 2 small green tomatoes or tomatillos (use 1 red tomato + 1/2 tsp amchur as substitute) 1-inch ginger 4-5 cloves of garlic 1-2 green chilies 2 tbsp mustard oil (or any other as you wish) 1 tsp cumin 1/2 tsp carom seeds, coarsely pounded 2 tsp coriander powder 1 tsp turmeric 1 tsp red chili powder 1/2 tsp asafoetida Salt to taste Method In a pressure cooker, boil soaked and drained chickpeas with enough water, 1/2 tsp turmeric, whole green tomatoes or tomatillos and some salt. Once done, keep aside. Note: A pressure cooker should take 1 whistle on high heat and 4-5 whistles on low heat. For instant pot, boil at high pressure for 20 minutes. Let the steam escape naturally. Using a pestle and mortar, coarsely pound the ginger, garlic and green chili. Place a wok or heavy bottom pan on high heat and add oil. If using mustard oil, let it smoke up. Add cumin and carom seeds and once it crackles, add the pounded ginger-garlic-green chili. Sauté for about a minute and add the onions before they start to burn. Sweat the onions and then add turmeric and red chili. Sauté for a minute and then add coriander and asafoetida. Keep sautéing and check on the chickpeas. Take out the shredded pieces of tomatoes or tomatillos and add them to the onions and spices mixture. Stir to combine. If using amchur, add it now. Let everything simmer until you can see some oil getting release on the sides of the pan or wok. Add the chopped greens now and cook until they wilt and then add the green leaves puree or paste. Cover and cook on medium to low heat for 10 minutes. Drain the chickpeas but don't throw the water. Open the pan or wok and add the chickpeas first, stir to combine and cover and cook again on medium to low heat for 5 minutes. Open and add the water drained from chickpeas. The amount of water depends on how much gravy you want. Stir again and add salt as needed. Let the gravy slowly simmer without being covered until it slightly thickens and comes to the consistency you desire.

#rozkakhana series Jump to Recipe My mother still owns that iron kadhai (wok), the one that's perhaps older than me. It's marred with time and gotten better, charring and frying things like a master. Amidst what emerged from that heirloom kitchen utensil, crisp okra (and medu vadas) was my favourite. It sat steady on the gas stove as the vegetable was tossed around, not too many times but enough to ensure appropriate mixing of all ingredients and avoid unwanted roasting. The sound of okra cooking in that kadhai was a constant assuring background noise that accompanied me as I played or studied, always in the lookout to get a taste of the hot bhendi bhaja (okra stir fry in Odia). Growing up, I never knew this long slender green vegetable as okra; I knew it as lady's finger, the common English name popular in India. I remember it fondly being served as a crusty stir fry with the usual dal and rice, wrapped in rotis or parathas in my lunchbox with an extra serving in the side compartment, and floating in kanjis and sambars that mother made in summer. I don't know what mother did, but she always made the best okra and every dish had the okra cut in different shapes. Sometimes long and split and stuffed with masala, sometimes medium or diagonally cut for stir fries and sometimes more than an inch long or almost whole, tossed and added to gravies. Some people tell me they don't like okra—I don't quite understand how! I've a simple reasoning. If you don't enjoy eating okra, you've perhaps not cooked it right, until now. Okra/Lady's Finger or bhindi as it's called in Hindi is cooked in many different ways in India. This is one of the simplest ways of making it, especially in North India. Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, parts of Gujarat are a few places I can think where this style of making okra is an everyday kitchen affair. My mother, hailing from Odisha, also cooks it this way minus the lime or amchur. I often cook food that is a reflection of my childhood memories, and this version of okra adds a new dimension of sourness while travelling the usual road of spices and oil. And so, the addition of amchur or dried raw mango, a spice that I have relied time and again for a lovely tart taste and acetic smell. Okra happens to be one of my favourite vegetables, and I admire how well it can be variated to create dishes that taste so good. Make this easy stir fry and serve with rice or flatbreads along with simple legumes and sides as chutneys. Pro Tip: While buying okra, look for tender young and smaller pods. If you can break or bend the ends of an okra, it's usually a good sign of it being fresh. To cook okra, ensure that you wash and dry it well before cooking. To dry, I suggest using a paper towel or dish cloth and wrapping the okra in it, briefly rub all between the towel or cloth and then let them air-dry for a bit. If the okra is wet, it'll turn soggy and sticky as you cook. If you want to make crispy okra, don't cover the pan while cooking. Start with high heat, and reduce the heat as needed during the cooking process. At no point should you cover the pan if the intention is crisply done okra. Recipe Did you check the pro tip? Ingredients 500 - 700 gm bhindi/okra 3 tbsp oil 1 tsp cumin seeds 1 tsp turmeric 1 tsp red chili powder 1/4 tsp asafoetida 1/2 tsp cumin powder 1 tsp coriander powder 3/4 tsp amchur or half of a lime 1 tsp salt, or to taste Method Wipe each Okra with a damp cloth and leave to air-dry. This should take about 10 to 15 minutes. or Fill a big bowl of water and dip all the Okra in it. Take out and lay on a paper towel to air-dry for 10-15 minutes. Note: The Okra should not be moist before you begin cooking. Else, it's likely to get slimy and sticky. Dice the okra about 1-inch in size. Pour oil into a frying pan or kadhai and keep on medium heat. Once the oil is hot, add cumin seeds. When they crackle, add the diced okra and stir for about 5 minutes. Add turmeric, red chili and asafoetida, and stir for 2-3 minutes. Next add the cumin and coriander powder and stir to combine. Next, you need to keep stirring the okra, leaving it to cook on its own in between. You can finish other errands in the kitchen while the okra gets stir fried. Keep an eye and gently stir it in between! In about 15 to 20 minutes, the okra should start turning brown. Turn the heat down slightly if the okra sticks to the pan and add a few drops of oil. Add the amchur or squeeze the lime, add salt and give everything a gentle stir. Cook until crisp and then turn off the heat.

#rozkakhana series Jump to Recipe On many weekends in Bangalore, I often found myself in a dwam after waking up in the morning — a time when memories of Sundays from my childhood played like a film in my mind. It happened more on a Sunday than a Saturday when no great shakes of the corporate week-life ahead hit hard. It happens even now, but then it felt different for some reason. I was no longer living in a hostel or with Auntie A as I did in Bombay nor with sister M when I initially moved to Bangalore. We were four girls, living in a rented apartment grappling prosaic weekdays in corporate offices, dreaming big and working hard. When the week ended I was usually home waking up with my nose in a book or eyes swollen from watching an old Bollywood movie, and in that moment between slumber and awakening, I mostly missed the noises and smells of home. My father being a banker worked 6 days a week, and perhaps that's why Sundays were salient for us as a family. All the slow cooking, tidying, cleaning and effort-taking tasks were done on a Sunday morning before we gathered at the table for a minimal yet finger-licking lunch consisting of a central meat dish like chicken or mutton with rice or rotis on the side and a big plate of vegetable salad. To a large extent, this story is true for many families in India, and a tad special for Bengalis and Odias. Pick a random Odia or Bengali, and they will turn nostalgic about their family recipe of a Sunday mangsa jhola /mangshor jhol, freshly bought mutton (goat meat) cooked in a thin runny gravy which is nothing like the ones you'd get in a restaurant how much ever it's pitched 'as good as home.' Like all Odia and Bengali homes, my family also favoured the time consuming mutton than chicken which cooks faster. It wasn't until the late 90s when I was a budding teenager that mother started cooking chicken at home frequently. My eldest sister P had started college and ate out once in a while, and after tasting chicken she came back a convert. Not fond of fish a lot, she raised an important question, "Why not chicken jhol instead of fish on weekdays, and what about chicken instead of mutton on Sundays?" Mother and I were fish lovers, so that was not going away. But chicken found a place in the Sunday menu soon. Mother was raised in a family who loved their meat. Apart from a plethora of fish and mutton, there was a lot of game meat, and some country chicken which does take quite a bit of time to cook. Father's family was a stark opposite. They never ate chicken, and fish or mutton only on a Sunday contrary to father who will eat it any given day! Amidst all of this, chicken somehow was never a showstopper in our home until late. Upstaged by marine and fresh water meat fetched in Odisha and West Bengal, chicken has had its share of associated stigma and disregarded by the elite. "Raised by the poor", "unhygienic", "impure", "the banned bird", and more of such guff prevented chicken to be cooked in the homes of the soi-disant bada babus. Owing to the ancestral clout around chicken-eating and the soft soap around mutton and fish, there was a mental block to eating chicken that many middle class families had to overcome. This was perhaps also a case in my father's side of the family, which percolated into our dietary practices but thankfully disappeared with time. The unpopularity of chicken in eastern Indian households until the 1970s is a paradox. Gallus gallus or the red jungle fowl, the prominent progenitor of the modern day chicken, is a native to the Indian subcontinent, going back to Indus Valley civilization in history. Domesticated in at least three different places in Asia and interbred with local populations of different jungle fowl species, the chicken was taken to West Asia, Europe and the Americas. This article in The Guardian sums it well: The spread of chickens from Asia south- and eastwards is thought to have been initiated by the first farmers, or Austronesians, who spread from mainland China into Island South East Asia around 5000 years ago. With them, they took pottery and agriculture including domestic animals such as pigs and dogs. Although archaeological chicken remains from this region are very scarce, it is assumed that chickens formed part of this agricultural package as well. Coming to this recipe of chicken jhol, I'd like to emphasize it's not a curry! Ever since colonization when Britishers coined the word curry to label every Indian dish that comes with gravy or based in stew, there must be a million 'chicken curry' dishes floating around on the internet and recipe books. A jhol is a colloquial term in the eastern Indian cuisine, West Bengal and Odisha to be specific, and refers to the gravy of a vegetarian or non-vegetarian dish. This gravy is not served on the side like the gravies served along with roasted meat as done in Europe and the Americas. It's part of the dish, rather the base in which the meat or vegetables cook, soak and float and get served. Until I moved to Bangalore, I had never cooked non-vegetarian food as there weren't many opportunities to cook in the hostels while my land lady, Auntie A was a vegetarian, and couldn't tolerate non-vegetarian food in her kitchen! In the privacy of my own space in Bangalore, I first started cooking fish and then chicken. This chicken jhol, although draws from the flavours of chicken and mutton gravies my mother cooked as well as the ones I ate in the homes of many friends and relatives, it largely represents my own interpretations and contemplations of the tastes I enjoy the most in a jhol. I prefer light thin gravies in meats, loosely spiced with subtly caramelized onions and has a streak of acidity from tomatoes or yogurt, or sometimes both. Nothing is overwhelming and the meat which is marinated just right with some simple ginger, garlic and chilies gets tossed around and simmers in the jhol slowly, letting the fat float on top and announcing its doneness. The other day, Priyanka from the Slow Kitchen fame started a conversation on Instagram, "Is cooking an act of individuation?" The dish that perhaps best answers this question for me is this recipe of chicken jhol - a dish that pioneered my journey in the kitchen to a large extent. I had surely cooked before, learning from Auntie A, taking notes over many phone calls with my mother, trying new things in sister M's kitchen. In my own kitchen however, especially with chicken recipes which were usually not common at home, I found my own culinary voice. I had begun to express myself in the seasoning I added, the techniques I developed and the foibles I embraced. My food, though inspired by all the people who fed me and provided pathways showing me ways to create in the kitchen, was beginning to reflect more of who I am and resonated with my thought process and feelings. It was a time when cooking started feeling meditative, an act of focusing inner thoughts and energies, in pursuit of individualization. I have cooked this chicken for many people and they all love it. It was always rewarding to know that my housemates in Bangalore huddled around me in the kitchen when the scent of the gravy wafted to their rooms, reminiscing what home feels like. It's naturally my sister P's favourite although contrasting from her style of chicken jhol. The best part is that the recipe is quite versatile. So, I use it to make paneer or eggs for my vegetarian husband and he totally relishes it! Pro Tip: I don't believe in the readymade 'chicken masalas' sold out there! I make my spice blend fresh and use it in the dish, or sometimes make a little extra to stock up. None of the flavours in this dish over power the senses. They are in perfect balance. I ensure this by not marinating the chicken for too long. I marinate it at the beginning and go about doing other prep. You can also marinate it in the morning, if you're planning this for lunch. Since I marinate the chicken in yogurt which lends a sweet and sour note, I am judicious with the tomatoes I add. You can opt out the yogurt if you want, but use more tomatoes then. To keep the gravy thin yet well assembled, cover and cook the chicken! Open towards the end and then let it simmer to slightly thicken the gravy. For the same reason, I also like to finely chop the onions instead of making a paste. If you make a paste, the texture will be different and the gravy will be thicker. Recipe Did you check the pro tip? Ingredients 600-700 grams chicken - breast and leg pieces included along with any other pieces you like Spice blend: 1 tbsp coriander, 1 tsp cumin, 3-4 black pepper, 2 cardamom, strands of mace, 1-inch cinnamon, 1/2 tsp fennel - roast lightly and grind Marination: 3 tbsp yogurt, 1/2 tsp turmeric, 1/2 tsp red chili, 1/2 tsp salt, 2 green chilies slit, 1 tsp of the spice blend 3 tbsp oil Whole spices: 1 bay leaf, 1 black cardamom 1 tsp cumin 1 tbsp ginger garlic paste 2 medium onions chopped fine (chop them as fine as you can!) 1 tomato chopped fine 1/2 tsp ghee a pinch of cinnamon (about 1/5 tsp) cover and cook for thin jhol, open towards the end and let the gravy thicken slightly fresh coriander to garnish Method In a pan, dry roast the ingredients mentioned in spice blend. The roasting should be light - a couple of seconds until the spices turn mildly fragrant. Turn off heat, let the spices cool down and then blend them coarse. Keep aside. In a bowl, add the chicken along with the ingredients mentioned for marination. Mix everything with clean hands so that the spices and yogurt coat the chicken pieces. Cover and keep aside. In a heavy bottom pan or wok on medium heat, add oil. Once the oil is hot, add the whole spices. Toss around and then add cumin. Let everything crackle and then add ginger garlic paste. Sauté for a few seconds and then add the onions before the ginger garlic burns. Sauté the onions until they turn golden from pink, and then add 1 tsp of the spice blend. Stir to combine and then keep stirring and cooking until the onions are caramelized. You can add splashes of water if anything sticks to the pan. Add tomatoes and cook until tomatoes are soggy. Add some salt, stir, cover and cook for 5-7 minutes on low to medium heat. On opening, mix again and you will notice oil separating on the sides. Add the marinated chicken to the masala cooking in the pan. Start braising the chicken along with the onion-tomato masala and the spiced yogurt. Keep tossing the pieces and let everything combine well. This will take about 10 minutes. Add 1 more tsp of the spice blend and then sauté again for 3-4 minutes. Add warm water depending on how much gravy you want, and ensure that the water totally covers the chicken pieces. Add salt and give a mix. Cover and cook for 15 minutes. On opening the pan, you will notice oil beginning to float on top. Now add ghee and cinnamon, and cover the pan again and cook for 5 more minutes or until the chicken is tender and cooked. Open and let the gravy simmer uncovered for a minute or two. Turn off heat and let it rest for a few minutes before serving. Garnish with coriander and serve hot!

#rozkakhana series Jump to Recipe There's something about root vegetables that grips me. How these magical things grow underground and turn luscious and beautiful. Ever thought of beets, carrots, sweet potatoes, radishes, parsnips, turnips, fennels, onions, garlic and more of their kind and wondered how they get so colorful while growing in the dark? I wonder how we take such miracles of nature for granted, the way muted earthy-toned root vegetables are often ignored except potatoes. One such vegetable is taro, the root of the Colocassia plant. On having these thoughts, I usually write to let my emotions find home in words, and sometimes I seek books or the internet hoping to find something — a blurb, an essay or an account — resonating with my feelings. During one such venture of finding thoughts on taro, I came across Sumana Roy's article in The Hindu. She describes what I feel perfectly: There is something inherently foreign about eating what grows underground. And the humble taro root — kochu in Bengali — comes wrapped in mystery and cultural connotations Like all vegetables, taro has many names in India. I knew it as saru in Odia in my childhood, and later learned it as arbi in Hindi. Like its many names, taro is cooked in many ways across India. In Odisha, it's readily added to mixed vegetable preparations like santula, doused with lentils and other vegetables in dalma, or celebrated on its own as saru besara, where taro is cooked with mustard paste. In neighbouring Bengal, where it's called kochu, it's popularly made into a dry gravy with mustard and poppy seed paste, kochur loti and also made into chutney on the sil-bata. In both Odisha and Bengal, it's also eaten as stir fried or deep fried bhaja. The Sindhis call it kachalu and make into tasty fries, tuk, and serve it with sai bhaji or Sindhi kadhi. Taro is also cooked and eaten in all states of south India, and its other forms like ghandyali in Himachal Pradesh and gaderi in Uttarakhand are an integral part of everyday food. It's leaves are edible too, and cooked so many ways across India, but today I am talking about the root alone. Other than India, many Asian countries also have a tradition of growing and consuming taro. European, African and American countries also cook and eat taro in different ways. Taro is one of the earliest root crops to be cultivated, spreading from South-East Asia to China, Japan and the Pacific islands, and then travelling to Arabia and the Mediterranean region. Reaching Africa only about 2000 years ago, it's cultivated the most there now. Farmers prefer to grow it to fill the gap between seasonal crops, thus handling situations when food is in short supply. Although a water intensive crop, it spreads profusely in suitable conditions and yields well. Despite this, and its incredible taste and health benefits, taro remains overlooked. It's one of the most popular root vegetables grown all over the world, and yet not a favourite like the potato. I think its low reputation has much to do with the itchiness it causes — due to the presence of calcium oxalate crystals — and the effort required to let its sliminess go away before cooking or tweaking things in the pan to ditch the goop it creates. None of this ever kept me away from taro though. It could be because taro or saru as we call it was always part of our food while growing up. I watched my mother work with this vegetable that almost resembles a small gnawing mammal. Some may find it disgusting that I say so but Sumana calls it rat-looking in the article and I find it rather funny. Coming back to how mother cleaned it to get rid of the itchiness. Although advised to rub oil on her hands before peeling the taro, she would simply peel it with her bare hands, and then slide the pieces into a bowl of water, sprinkle some salt and leave it aside. Fifteen to twenty minutes later, she returned to the bowl, and washed the taro pieces under running water, rubbing and cleaning them between the tips of her fingers. "Here, feel it", she would give me a piece, and I'd lay it on a muslin or a tattered bit of an old saree. There was no itching whatsoever and just like that the taro was ready to be cooked. When I started cooking, I followed what my mother did, and never has taro itched my hands, mouth or throat. As I feel each piece of taro on my finger tips, washing its mucous away, I almost find myself in a conversation with the underestimated roots. It's almost like they tell me when they're ready to be tossed onto the paper towel and wiped of any leftover gumminess. I wash the taro leaves the same way too - dip them in bowl of water, rub salt, and wash them under running water, wiping the droplets with my hands. There are many ways of making taro, and honestly, I love all. I like it more than potato. Yes, I do. And, if you make this easy taro stir fry, you will also fall in love with taro if you haven't till now. I absolutely adore my mother's Odia style saru bhaja where she makes roundels of the root, coats them a light batter of rice flower and fries with cumin and chili. That's for another day! This recipe is the simplest kind of recipe to cook taro in typical north-Indian flavours, and has a typical Punjabi influence because I learned it from Auntie A. It's mildly spicy and optimally tangy and smells beautiful because of the carom seeds. There are fewer dishes that come close to the joy of stir fried taro with some dal and rice! Pro Tip: Always choose the smaller variety of taro. They're easy to handle and taste better. To get rid of the sliminess and itching caused from taro, always peel taro root first and cut them up into the shapes you want. Next, soak them in salt water for about 20 minutes and then wash them by lightly rubbing them between your fingers. Put them on a paper towel, and dab them dry. You can rub your hands with oil as precaution. Keep the taro pieces slightly thick for a good texture. This will also prevent them from turning gloopy and soggy. You can also sprinkle a little chickpea flour or rice flower on the pieces towards the end. This helps to absorb the sliminess. Recipe Did you check the pro tip? Ingredients 400-500 gm arbi or taro root (smaller variety), cut into thick roundels or wedges 1 small onion, chopped into chunks (optional) 1-2 green chilies, halved and slit 3-4 tbsp mustard oil (or any other oil of your choice) 1 tsp carom seeds (ajwain) 1/2 tsp asafoetida (heeng) 1 tsp turmeric 1 tsp red chili powder 1 tsp coriander 2 tsp dry mango powder (amchur) or juice of 1 lime 1 tsp salt, or to taste 1/4 tsp chaat masala Fresh cilantro to garnish Method Peel, cut and wash taro root and soak in salt water for at least 20 minutes. Drain and dry the roundels in a kitchen towel. In a wok or pan, heat oil. If you're using mustard oil, let it smoke. Add carom seeds and asafoetida. Let them get fragrant, and add the taro root roundels. Toss well to coat the vegetable with the carom seeds. Cover and cook on low heat for 10 minutes. Open the cover, stir again and then add the onion and chilies. Mix well and then add salt. Cover again and cook on low heat for the next 5-7 minutes. Open and check for doneness and then add turmeric, red chili powder, coriander powder and dry mango powder. Stir to combine. Keep cooking on medium heat till the spices are cooked and coat the taro root roundels nicely. Switch off the heat and sprinkle the chaat masala. Add the cilantro on top before serving.

Casserole recipes have my heart. Why you ask? They are perfect for any occasion (weeknight, brunch, weekends, holidays, you name it!), easy to assemble and make, and hassle free to serve! And, you can choose to make it as a side dish or a main course! This casserole recipe is the first one I baked in my brand new Le Creuset casserole dish I bought from Rambles. (It has a beautiful blue color, and sits pretty on the table when served.) The recipe in itself is wholesome as it has the goodness of greens like kale, spinach, broccoli stems, creaminess of white sauce (made from scratch with no trans fat cheese and gluten free flour), and good carbs, fibers and proteins from Nuworld's rice melange. The rice blend used here is a mix of Basmati brown rice, red rice and black sweet rice, yielding that much needed risotto like stickiness for the recipe. Recipe PDF You can choose to customize the recipe based on your choice of greens. You can also use wild rice instead of rice melange. Black rice was named 'forbidden rice' in ancient China where it was grown in limited quantities and only the royalty were allowed to consume it. It was not too long in the past that this rice got introduced in other countries and gained popularity in super markets. It is also being locally grown in many countries owing to its gluten free and healthy antioxidants qualities. Recipe Ingredients 2 cups of cooked rice melange 1 bunch of kale, leaves torn 1 bunch of baby spinach 1/2 cup of broccoli stems diced (I save them when I cut off broccoli florets) 1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil 1 tbsp unsalted butter 4 cloves of garlic, minced 1-2 sprigs of fresh thyme (or 1 tsp dried thyme) 1/4 tsp nutmeg 1/4 tsp paprika 1/2 tsp black pepper 1/2 tsp chili flakes 1 tbsp flour 2/3 cup milk (I used unsweetened almond milk) 1/4 cup Greek yogurt Parmesan cheese (or any cheese of your choice) 2 large red onions, Julienne sliced Salt to taste Method Grease the casserole dish and set aside. Heat a pan or skillet over medium heat and add the torn kale leaves, spinach and broccoli stems. Add about 1/2 cup of water and some salt. Cover and cook until the kale is wilted and broccoli stems are tender. Once the greens are cooked, take them off the skillet and set them aside. Return the skillet to medium heat and add olive oil. Once the oil is hot enough, add the sliced onions and let them sizzle and caramelize. Toss the onions, season with salt and pepper and then continue cooking for 5 minutes without stirring. Then, keep aside half the onions. Add the butter and let it brown. Reduce the heat and add garlic, thyme, chili flakes and nutmeg. Mix well and then add the kale, spinach and broccoli stems. Sprinkle the flour over the mix in the skillet and let it cook for about a minute. Next add the milk and bring it to a boil. Add the yogurt and stir to combine and form a thick sauce. Remove the heat and mix in the cooked rice. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Pour everything from the skillet to the prepared casserole dish, and then add a layer of onions using the ones you kept aside. Then, add grate the cheese and add on top. Bake the casserole for 25 to 30 minutes or until the cheese melts! You can also choose to eat this as a meal in itself or pair it with a piece of your favorite lean meat or tofu and enjoy!

#rozkakhana series Jump to Recipe On some days, I have no desire to cook. Although kitchen is my happy place, I am sometimes drained of creativity there. It happens to all of us, right? Nevertheless, we got to eat. At such times, some vegetables work as wonders. Eggplant is one of them. Call it aubergine or brinjal or eggplant or think of any variety you may know, Indian, Italian, Japanese — whatever the name and variety — its versatility truly amazes me in every dish I make with it. I know everyone isn't fond of it though. Like tofu, it's reputation is disputed. For example, the Hindi word baingan for it means "without good qualities", just like tomato was nicknamed "poison apple" in medieval Europe. It was thought aristocrats got sick and died after eating tomatoes when the culprit were pewter plates. Since eggplant belongs to the night shade family of plants which produce alkaloids that can trigger toxic and psychotropic effects, in its initial wild form, it wasn't widely accepted. Centuries of plant domestication and studies have shown its health benefits and dietary usefulness. I picked up the idea for this dish from my friend R who is a Bengali. The Bengali affinity for nigella seeds or kalo jeere is not a surprise, and their subtle oniony flavour goes really well with begun (eggplant in Bengali). It comes together in a breeze and is so high on flavours. Relying on only three spices, the highlight being nigella seeds (kalonji in Hindi), this eggplant preparation is my answer to the easiest stir fries ever. Whether you top it on your rice and dal or wrap it in a flatbread with some delicious chutney or simply munch on its own or add it to a green salad, there's hardly any way you can go wrong with it. Pro Tip: Eggplant acts almost like a sponge when it comes to any liquid added to it. There's a likelihood of you adding more oil into the dish than needed. Why? Every time the eggplant chunks soak up the oil while being tossed in the pan, you'd be urged to add some more. Don't! Rather, reduce the heat and keep stirring the veggie once in a while or cover it and cook for sometime to get an extra char. The smokiness is an added layer of lovely flavour you cannot not love. Recipe Did you check the pro tip? Ingredients 5-6 small eggplants or 1 medium eggplant, cut into big chunky cubes 1 tbsp mustard oil (or any other oil of your choice) 1 tsp nigella seeds, heaped 1 tsp red chili powder 1 tsp turmeric 1 tsp salt, or to taste Method In a pan or wok, heat oil on medium heat. If you're using mustard oil, smoke it. Once the oil is smoking hot, add the nigella seeds. Add the eggplants and stir for about a minute. Leave the eggplants to sizzle in the heat for another minute. Add red chili powder, turmeric and salt. Stir to combine. Cover and cook on low heat for about 15 to 20 minutes. Open occasionally and give the pan or wok a good shake and stir the ingredients. Turn off the heat once the eggplants are tender but still hold their shape.

#rozkakhana series Jump to Recipe For me, winter is synonymous with gajar ka halwa, an Indian confection made of grated carrots cooked in slowly simmering milk. Sugar is added in the end to enhance the taste, a glug of ghee and cardamoms for fragrance and the much needed warmth during the cold season. Made with fresh red carrots that are only available during winters in India, gajar halwa is an emotion for many like me. With the onset of fog and frost, the best varieties of carrots show up in the markets along with other delicious produce. Another variant of the gajar halwa is made with black carrots, a dessert much sought after at homes and the many Indian weddings that happen at this time of the year. Packed with the wholesomeness of milk, nutrients of carrots and good fats of ghee and nuts, gajar halwa emanates the feeling of fullness of the soul. Although more popular in north India, this dessert is made almost everywhere in India, or at least most parts of the subcontinent. Originally derived from the Turkish word hulw (meaning sweet), halwa entered India in the north and the south through the port cities of Karachi and Kozhikode respectively by the way of trade routes, and became so popular that Indian confectioners are still called halwais. It's one dessert that's ubiquitous in the Indian sweet repertoire and there are multiple main ingredients available to make the sweet treats like grains (semolina, wheat), vegetables (carrots, gourds, pumpkin), nuts (almonds, walnuts) and even meat or eggs. Acclaimed writer and historian, Rana Safvi cites the book, Guzishta Lucknow (Lucknow, the last phase of an Oriental Culture) by Abdul Sharar and mentions in this Indian Express article, “In Guzishta Lucknow, Sharar writes that taking the name into consideration, halwa originated in Arabic lands and came to India via Persia.” It is also believed that the Ottoman king, Suleiman the Magnificent was a keen halwa enthusiast, and the halwa perfected in the Ottoman empire's kitchen arrived in India as a dried, grainy mush of perhaps sesame seeds and honey. This was rehydrated with rosewater, sugar and ground pistachios to create a textured mixture of ghee and sugar in India. I'm not big on Indian mithai. If you've been following me for a while, you'd know. However, there are a few Indian sweets that I adore, and gajar halwa is one of them. What appeals to me most is how so few ingredients cook into such a marvelous dessert that's wholesome and is finger-licking good. SO GOOD! Growing up, I and my elder sister M were always mother's helping hands to grate the carrots. I hardly cooked anything in the kitchen when I lived with my parents, but this I did happily! That saccharine smell of cardamoms and carrots with a hint of ghee was everything delightful on brumal evenings during my childhood. Mother made it twice, even thrice a month during winter and most of it got over in one sitting. While everyone usually enjoys this halwa warm, I didn't mind a bit of the cold halwa the next morning. As a hot savoury paratha arrived on my breakfast plate, I scooped the remnants of the halwa from the dish and slathered on the paratha. Rolled and bit into the wrap of scrumptiousness! In India, this halwa is made with either red or purple carrots, and it was usually the red one at my place. I haven't been able to find red carrots in Canada so far. Perhaps someday that miracle will happen. Since I already compromise on the type of carrot here, I'm extremely unyielding on the method of preparing it. I know some who advise cooking the carrots for a few minutes in the pressure cooker or doing the entire process in the instant pot, but I follow the same old school method as my mom. No compromise on the time it takes or the effort involved! In a world where everything is oriented to the click of a button, where trends come and go in seconds and things change every other day, I prefer somethings to remain as they're. A slow cooked gajar halwa is a reminder of the slower simpler life we tend to forget these days, and I hold it dear with every beat of my heart. Make this labour of love and enjoy warm servings right after it's off the stove. You can also make it a day in advance if you're hosting a party and would like to serve this as dessert. Just heat it well before serving. Pro Tip A tasty gajar halwa is the result of carrots cooked in milk over an extended period of time. There's no shortcut to it. The more the milk evaporates, the more milk solids are formed and absorbed into the halwa, and nicer is the taste. Always use the thicker side of the grater to grate your carrots. Very thinly grated carrots do not yield a good texture in the halwa and turn too pulpy and mashed. Do not use a lot of fat in gajar halwa as it overpowers the taste of the carrots. However, adding a small amount of ghee is imperative for the shelf life of the halwa as well as taste. A pinch of salt in the end helps to balance the sweetness of the halwa and brings all the flavours together. Also, add sugar only at the very last stage when the milk has been absorbed and the carrots are cooked fully. If you add sugar before the carrots are cooked, they won't cook through once sugar enters the pan! Most importantly, pay attention to the halwa when the milk has mostly evaporated. At this stage it's important to stir intermittently to prevent anything from burning. Recipe Did you check the pro tip? Ingredients 1 kg red or orange carrots (If using orange carrots, choose the varieties that are sweeter) 1.25 liter milk (I used 2%) 1 cup sugar (I use small grained golden sugar) 3 tbsp ghee 2-3 green cardamoms crushed 1/2 tsp cardamom powder 3-4 tbsp nuts of your choice (I used cashews and flaked almonds) 1 tbsp raisins (optional) 1/4 tsp saffron strands (optional) To make it vegan, you can use a plant based milk like almond or cashew milk. Coconut or oat milk tend to impart their own flavour in this halwa which is not ideal. You can replace the ghee with a neutral oil. It won't taste the same, but still flavourful. Method Wash and peel the carrots. Now grate the carrots using the thicker side of the grater. Add milk to a heavy bottom pan and put it on medium-high heat. Once the milk comes to a full boil reduce the heat and let the milk simmer. Keep stirring often in between to prevent milk from sticking and burning. Meanwhile, in another pan or Dutch oven, heat 1 tbsp ghee and add the crushed cardamoms. Once you can smell the aroma, add the grated carrot and sauté to let the moisture from the carrot out. This will take around 10-15 minutes. At this stage, there are 2 options: Either transfer the sautéed and moisture-evaporated carrots into the simmering milk or pour the simmering milk into the sautéed carrots. Whichever pan has a thicker heavier bottom, use that pan from this step onwards. I use a heavy bottom vessel for boiling the milk and pour it into the Dutch oven where I sauté the carrots. Now, cook the carrots in the simmering milk on medium heat until the milk completely evaporates - that's the goal! As the milk evaporates and forms solids, the carrots get cooked and absorb the milk. This will take 45 to 50 minutes. To ensure that the carrots are completely cooked through, I close the lid of the pan and cook on medium low heat for about 10 minutes, and then cook on medium heat with lid open till the end by stirring the mixture once in a while and scrapping the solidified milk sticking to the sides of the pan and mixing everything. Meanwhile, in a small pan add the remaining ghee and place on medium heat. Add the nuts and raisins and lightly roast. Sprinkle the saffron on top if using. Switch off heat and keep aside. Once you see the milk almost evaporated, add the sugar and stir continuously for 3-4 minutes on medium heat. As soon as you add sugar, the halwa will thin out but as the sugar gets cooked and assimilated, it will thicken again. So stir and combine well! This will take about 15 - 20 minutes. Add the cardamom powder along with the fried nuts, raisins, ghee and saffron into the halwa, and continue stirring everything. Ensure that the halwa does not dry out too much but all the milk is evaporated and carrots are cooked through. Add a tiny pinch of salt and stir to combine again. Turn off heat and serve the gajar halwa warm!

#rozkakhana series Jump to recipe In 1925, American writer and journalist, Janet Flanner, who served as the Paris correspondent of the New Yorker, started writing a column, Letter from Paris. These were later collected into a book, Paris was Yesterday 1925-1939. In one of those letters, Janet says, "In the history of art there are periods when bread seems so beautiful that it nearly gets into museums" and I couldn't agree more, even though she is talking about bread different from the ones made in Indian kitchens. Growing up in an Odia family in India, where rice is a preferred in the meals, roti, the commonest flatbread I ate at home, was mostly served at breakfast or dinner or packed in lunchboxes. I must have been 5 years old or younger when I sat against one of the tall pillars in the porch attached to our backyard at dinnertime. Mother tore a roti into pieces, soaked them in a bowl of yellow dal, and fed me mouthfuls as she told a story to have me sit steady. I easily got distracted to swing on the wooden horse, and she quickly rolled the greens or vegetables into another roti and let me take a bite every now and then without letting me wander too long. I was hungry as a child, for stories more than food, and mother never ran out of either. When I started going to school, her rotis and parathas (flatbread roasted with oil or ghee) found their way to my compartmentalized steel tiffin box. As I grew up, I watched her closely while she worked with the dough—how she brought the flour together effortlessly judging and adding water without any measuring cups or scales. I remember she often let me play with some flour or dough as I sat outside the kitchen as a child, not budging from her side while she prepped, cooked and cleaned. I watched the dough being rolled into round breads, a dusting of flour to keep the momentum going and plunked on the hot griddle. In seconds, the colour changed and mother turned the side, pressing the edges to let it puff and swell. The last leg of the roti was on the open flame of the stove, where it charred and cooked fully and then got served on the plate. I moved to Bombay when I was 18 and lived in a hostel where rotis still made an appearance on the meal plates in different forms: chapatis, tandoori rotis, kulchas and more. At 20, I found a new home with an old Punjabi lady, and found roti in almost every meal I ate. "Roti khayi?" is what my Punjabi Auntie A would ask everyday before I left home for college or before I went to bed. Literally translating to "Ate bread?", "Roti Khayi?" actually implies, "Did you eat?" because roti is not just bread in a Punjabi household. It defines a meal. Living amidst people whose food was indescribable without rotis, my appetite and interest flourished in the art of making Indian flatbreads. I love the feel of the flour on my fingers, and working the dough with my bare hands is therapeutic. But this wasn't always the case. The first rotis I ever made were terrible. Auntie A supervised and helped me a lot to understand how water works with different kinds of flour, how one has to gently roll the belan on the sides of the dough so it turns on its own on the chakla, and the more I practiced, the better my rotis became. Kneading a dough is meditative, and there's a certain calmness I feel repeating the process of pulling and combing it together. Many would find this rather exhaustive, even messy. There's a way around that too, and if you read the tips and the process below, you wouldn't shy away from working a dough next time. Although wheat is thought to be the most common grain to make flatbreads in India, there are several other grains and millets that are ground and used to make breads in different communities throughout the country. Several gluten free alternatives like rice, sorghum, buckwheat, maize, pearl millet are ground into flour and used to make rotis from ancient times. Ever since its domestication in the Fertile Crescent, we have heavily relied on wheat and that has resulted in a shrinking list of crops for the bulk of our diet. Our food systems are becoming increasingly unstable as a consequence. A more homogeneous global food basket makes agriculture more vulnerable to drought, pests and diseases, which will be exacerbated by climate change, says Luigi Guarino, a co-author and senior scientist at the Global Crop Diversity Trust, in Germany. I grew up eating wheat rotis predominantly. However with exposure to greater variety of flatbreads made of other grains and millets in different cultures in India and around the world, I tend to include multigrain rotis in my diet than only wheat. A non-glutinous dough is trickier to knead and roll than a wheat flour dough. However, using different flours in combination with wheat eases the process of making the dough and rolling the flatbreads, not to mention the diversity it introduces in our food basket and helps in reducing sole dependency on wheat. The process... There are 3 stages to making a dough for an Indian flatbread: Mixing: Add any dry ingredients you'd want to add to your dough. For example, if you're using salt or spices to flavour your dough, first add them into the flour and mix everything with your clean hands. Then, add water in small doses and move your hands in circular motions in the bowl to mix water with the dough. Combining: Keep adding water as needed, and now bring together the flour to combine with water and form a roughly shaped ball. There's no kneading at this point of time. The aim is to form a pulpy ball of flour and clean the bowl of any remaining flour. Kneading: You may want to slightly wet your hands at this stage or apply some oil on your fingers to get rid of any dough sticking onto them. Now gently pat the dough and apply mild pressure on the dough with the heal of your hand (the portion where your palm ends and wrist begins), stretch it and fold it back. Continue this process until the dough is a smooth and soft ball. Pro Tip: If you're new to working with flour and making flatbreads, I recommend introducing water in small doses than adding all of it in a go. For example, if you're using 1 cup of flour to make a dough for rolling flatbreads later, you'll need roughly about 1/2 cup of water or lesser. But wait! Don't add all the water into the flour. First, bring the flour together into a roughly combined ball by adding about 1/4 cup of water at a time. Once the flour is mostly combined, wet your hands and wipe the sides of the bowl with the loosely formed dough to clean all the remnant flour. After kneading a smooth dough, cover it with a wet cloth and set aside for at least 20 minutes to half an hour before you start making the rotis. While cooking the rotis on the griddle, always let one side of the roti cook before turning its side. This is indicated by a change in colour of the roti. You must change the sides of the roti as soon as the colour changes, and not let it sit on the griddle too long. Otherwise, your rotis will turn hard. To help the roti puff up, gently press the sides with a clean cloth or a wooden spatula. Recipe Did you check the pro tip? Note: You may use the same recipe to make only wheat flour rotis also. Just replace the other flours with wheat and follow the same process. Ingredients 1/2 cup wheat flour 1/4 cup sorghum flour 1/4 barley 2 tbsp buckwheat flour (optional) a small pinch of salt (optional) 1/2 cup water + extra as needed Method Did you check the process? In a large bowl, add all the flours and salt, and mix with your clean hands. Now start adding water in small doses (about 1/4 cup at a time) to form a loosely combined dough. Wet your hand with water or apply some oil on your fingers, hold the loosely combined dough and rub and wipe clean the sides of the flour for any remaining flour. Start kneading the dough, applying pressure with the heal of your hand to stretch and fold it to form a smooth and soft dough. Cover the bowl with a wet cloth and set aside for 20 to 30 minutes. Open the bowl, knead the dough again for about 2-3 minutes and make lemon sized balls out of it. Keep some flour for dusting ready. Place a griddle on medium to high heat and let the griddle become hot. This is faster if you have an open flame gas stove. On an electric stove, this can take about 5-7 minutes. While the griddle is heating, take a lemon sized dough ball, dust some flour on the rolling surface/board and using a rolling pin, roll it flat to form a small circle. Dust the dough again and continue rolling, applying pressure on the sides and corners and turning the circular roti around as needed. To estimate the size of the circle, keep your palm on the flatbread midway to get an idea how big a circle you want. Lift the roti and pat it to let go off any remaining flour, and place it on the hot griddle. In a few seconds, the colour of the roti will change. Turn its side. Once you see blisters on both surfaces, your roti is cooked through. At this stage, if you have an open flame gas stove, you can lift the roti with tongs and roast it on the fire for a few seconds on both sides. If you have an electric stove, you can place a steel wire roaster on the heated coil or plate of the stove, place the roti on it and roast it by holding with tongs. Repeat the steps 6 and 7 for all the lemon sized dough balls. Serve right away or wrap all the rotis in a clean cloth and keep at table just before serving.

#rozkakhana series Jump to recipe Have you ever eaten something that's made entirely of green peas but looks nothing like it? Then, you're here for a treat! Matar ka Nimona is a stew that tells the story of winters in the Gangetic plains of India, a dish that celebrates fresh peas and newly harvested potatoes in all their glory. I remember veracious winters when my family was based in Ranchi and Jamshedpur. Packed in layers of warm clothing, only our nose and lips visible, I and my sisters sat with four other children in a somewhat tottering autorickshaw and went to school as early as 6:30 in the morning. Chilly winds, fog and whooshing trees were routine stories as the rickshaw turned around Jubilee Park. By mid day I was eager to reach my bag because mother would have packed the lunchbox with the best meals of the season: parathas stuffed with potatoes or cauliflowers, ghee laden chapatis with simply sautéed peas, mushy garlicky radish or spinach greens or sweet smelling halwa of carrots. The freshest produce of winter is irresistible and being a rare child who loved sabz khana (green food) I ate to my heart's content, and needless to say mother was proud of me and my neatly eaten dabba. While we lived in the twin cities of Bihar and Jharkhand, my family also got acquainted to many from the Hindi Heartland of India, Uttar Pradesh. Father, a charming talker had many colleagues and friends from his years of service at the bank. We knew people from Allahabad, Benaras, Kanpur, Mathura, Gorakhpur and all of them had the ingenuity to turn winter produce into finger-licking delicacies. On several weekends in winter, we witnessed family gatherings on the communal terraces of our colony. Kerosene operated stoves were setup and everyone got busy bringing platters of green fresh peas, peeled potatoes and carrots, washed tomatoes, turnips and radishes, and bags of flour. As the sun shone through the morning, mats were laid and stoves were pumped. Prodigious iron kadais were brought out and generous quantities of nimona matar (stew made of ground fresh peas), tehri (fluffy rice made with veggies like cauliflower, carrots and potatoes) and gajar halwa were made and served with several batches of pooris (fried bread). Although I got a taste of the most appetizing nimona matar then, I didn't quite understand its history and relevance until I grew up and moved to Bombay. On a rather frigid day in the barely existent winter of Bombay, I came across nimona matar again. The Bangladeshi cook had been well trained in the family from Meerut in Uttar Pradesh, and had prepared a delicious medley of ground peas, parboiled potatoes and fried moong bean dumplings. Gregarious B, the cook, walked me through the process of how she had learned and mastered the art of making the winter stew of fresh peas while the family told me how nimona originated in Uttar Pradesh and spread to other parts of the fertile northern plains in India. Made across Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh, nimona varies in taste and texture depending on the family and community where it's made. While the Benarasi version is bereft of onions and garlic, many communities in Uttar Pradesh make it strictly with onions. Some add tomatoes and boiled potatoes while some choose to fry the potatoes and not add tomatoes at all. Asafoetida, cumin and ghee are dominant in most recipes, while some may add a good dose of ginger and garlic. Some make it with glugs of mustard oil with a hint of garam masala in the end, and that happens to be the version I like the most. Accomplished writer and one of my favourite narrators, Anubhuti Krishna, has written an evocative essay on nimona on Goya Journal, and you may want to give it a read to know how the preparation varies across different regions. Nimona is not merely a winter stew or a way of utilizing fresh winter peas. It's an emotion, one that emanates salubriousness, a feeling of warmth on days that are short and nights that are long. Mother did not necessarily make this at home even though she made a lot of things she learned from other cultures. Father had a fetish for those patio and courtyard get-togethers under the winter sky, and the acquainted families welcomed us with good servings of their typical matar ka nimona. Over the years, this has become a part of my everyday meals in the winters when green peas are best in taste, a dish that reminds me the joys of winter despite the frost and snow. How I make nimona is naturally influenced from what I learned from the makers and the recipes I relished most. My recipe is easy with some basic prep. Fresh peas ground to a coarse paste and sautéed in cumin, ginger and tomatoes, cooked to let the fat float on top, and soft boiled potatoes dunked in a stew like gravy with badis (lentil dumplings) adding a hint of crunchiness and bites of excitement—this dish is a complete wholesome meal on its own! I like to add a dollop of freshly ground coriander, ginger and green chilies that adds a distinctive spicy note and a gorgeous colour to the stew. This is something I learnt from the cook B at my friend's house in Bombay. Make some simple rotis or ajwain parathas, or indulge in some pooris or cook some hot steamed rice and scoop a bowl of nimona off on a winter day bathing in the sun! Perhaps you'll then understand what I'm trying to emphasize here. Pro Tip: While grinding the peas, make it a coarse paste than fine. Although some recipes make it into a fine paste, I find leaving some peas intact gives a good texture to the gravy. Add the wadis (dried legume dumplings) only when the gravy is almost ready. If you add them before the gravy is cooked, they will turn soggy and lose their crunch. You can definitely make this stew without boiled potatoes. In that case, sauté the potatoes for 10 minutes before adding the spices in step 4. Nimona celebrates the goodness of peas, so don't go high on a lot of spices. Freshly ground coriander seeds, turmeric and asafoetida are sufficient to enhance flavours. Garam masala in the end is great, but not mandatory. Recipe Did you read the pro tip? Ingredients 2 cups green peas, shelled and boiled for 5-10 minutes 2 small potatoes, boiled and peeled, cut into wedges 1 medium tomato, sliced 3-4 dal wadi/badi (dried lentil dumplings) 3 tbsp mustard oil (or any other oil of your preference) For the green masala: 10-15 coriander stalks with leaves, 1-inch ginger, 1-2 green chilies You can choose to not add the coriander, and only pound ginger and chilies together. Taste will vary but not diminish. For the tempering/tadka: 1 tsp cumin, 1/4 tsp asafoetida, 2 red dried whole chilies Other spices: 1/4 tsp turmeric, 1/2 tsp freshly coarse ground coriander seeds (or coriander powder), 1/2 tsp garam masala 1 tsp salt, or to taste Method In a blender, make a paste of the ingredients mentioned under green masala by adding little water. Make a coarse paste of the boiled peas and keep aside. Ensure to leave some peas intact. I usually mash the peas with clean hands or use a potato masher. In a deep pan or wok (kadhai), heat mustard oil to smoking point and then add the badis. Fry for about 1 minute and then remove the badis and keep aside. Now, slightly reduce the heat if needed, and do the tempering with cumin going in first, followed by the dry red whole chilies and then asafoetida. Add the green masala and toss for a minute or until the residual water is reduced from the paste. Now add the tomatoes and sauté until the tomatoes soften and start losing their skin—about 4-5 minutes. At this point of time, add turmeric and coriander powder and sauté to cook the spices—roughly 3-4 minutes. Next add a pinch of salt and mix. Add the ground peas paste and stir to combine. Now cook the peas with the masala until the oil separates on the sides of the pan or wok. This will take about 15 to 20 minutes. Stir occasionally at medium heat and keep adding splashes of water to avoid anything from burning. When the masala is fully cooked, add more water to adjust consistency, slide in the boiled potatoes and fried wadis, and sprinkle garam masala and salt. Gently give a mix and let the stew simmer for 10 minutes before turning off the heat. Cover and rest for 4-5 minutes before serving. Squeeze a bit of lemon before serving if you wish.

#rozkakhana series Jump to recipe In cooking, some ingredients are matches made in heaven. Spinach and garlic happens to be one such combination, and when you pair this dainty duo with rice, the result is not just delicious. It's fail proof! While I and my eldest sister weren't not much of cooks growing up at home, the middle sister was our saviour in the kitchen whenever mother was away. Sister M always had a knack at turning things around in the kitchen, and quite delicious for that matter. Considering that she was a picky eater, she liked creating a lot of dishes in her own style. On many trips to M's home in Bangalore, she fed me voraciously. I'm mean it literally. Once I had eaten so much at 3 in the night after arriving from the airport that by 6 in the morning I wasn't in a good shape at all! Nothing with the food, much to do with eating a lot! Sister M makes this spinach rice or palak pulao, something she picked up from the many rice preparations she ate both in Mangalore and Bangalore, the enormous number of cooking shows she watches and the many ways she uses to utilize easily available pantry ingredients to make something incredibly tasty at home. I learnt it from her first, and over the years I started making small changes in the recipe to arrive at a version that I usually make now. Although I normally don't go gaga about cashews, I like it a lot in this rice—characteristic of how M makes it. The nutty flavour of roasted cashews adds a ton of crunch and taste amidst rice that looks so green and smells umami. I like to start with some earthy spices like peppercorns, bayleaf and cloves as the base flavour of this dish. I keep them whole and not pounded to help the rice absorb their fragrance and not much of their robust flavour. Cumin and garlic form the second layer of seasoning, both being the dominant scents and tastes in the dish. A combination of chopped and blended spinach makes a gravy sort of base and when you dunk rice in it, everything combines beautifully to yield an appetizing colour as well. This rice is easy to make and comes together with simple ingredients. Eat it as is with nothing on the side or whip up some yogurt or pan fry some vegetables. Eggplants cut as roundels and tossed with some salt, oil and chili goes really well. You can also serve it with a legume dish of your choice, some pickled vegetables or a mellow chutney. Pro Tip: Don't be overwhelmed by the whole spices like cloves, peppercorns and cardamom listed in the ingredients. You can make this palak pulao without them and it will still taste great. The only things you should not skip are cumin and garlic. Cumin and garlic when paired with spinach creates an exciting flavour profile, one that's hard to mess with. To maintain the granularity of rice and not make it a lump, always rinse and soak the rice the first thing in the recipe. Get on with prepping the other ingredients and start cooking. This ensures two things: one, the thin layer of starch from the rice gets removed and prevents the grains from sticking, and two, absorption of water in rice starts the cooking process even before rice enters the pot. Result is shorter cooking time and fluffier rice! Making a paste of a portion of the spinach leaves adds the lovely green colour. If you chop all the spinach, your pulao may not look as green but will still taste amazing! Recipe Did you check the pro tip? Ingredients 1 cup long grained rice like Basmati (or medium grain rice) 1 small bunch of spinach 1 and 1/2 tbsp oil 5-6 cashews (optional) 1 tsp cumin 1 bay leaf 3-4 peppercorns 2-3 cloves 1 black cardamom, slightly crushed 2 whole dried red chilies 3-4 cloves of garlic, chopped and pounded 1 small onion or a quarter of a large onion, chopped finely 1/4 tsp turmeric 1/4 tsp red chili powder 1/2 tsp coriander powder 1/4 tsp garam masala 2 tsp salt, or to taste Method Wash the rice in several changes of water. Rinse and keep it soaked while you proceed with the recipe. Boil water and add to a large bowl. Add the spinach leaves to it, wash by gently rubbing the leaves inside the bowl for 5-7 minutes. Drain the water. Wash in cold water and make sure no dirt remains on the leaves. Separate about a quarter of the spinach leaves from the bunch and finely chop them. Add the remaining leaves to a blender along with some water and make a fine paste. Heat a heavy bottom pan or vessel and add oil. Once the oil is hot, add bay leaf, peppercorns, cloves, black cardamom and dry red chilies. Sauté the whole spices for a couple of seconds and then add cumin. Add the cashews as well if using. As the cumin crackles, add the garlic. Reduce the heat slightly to avoid burning the garlic. Sauté for 10 seconds - you should be able to smell the garlic now. Add onions and sauté till they turn pink. Then add turmeric, red chili and coriander and continue stirring for 2-3 minutes. Let everything sizzle until the onions begin turning brown. Add the chopped spinach and give a good mix. Sauté for about 3 minutes and then add the garam masala. Keep stirring until the spinach leaves start wilting. At this stage, add the pureed spinach and cook on medium flame for about 5-7 minutes. Make sure if there's extra water in the puree, it evaporates. Drain the water from the rice and add rice to the spinach cooking in the masala. Add a little bit of salt and give everything a mix. Add 2 cups of water, more salt and close the lid. Cook for about 13 minutes on low heat. Turn off the heat, open and fluff the rice with a fork before serving.