Vegan

Here is an everyday dish with a fair number of ingredients. Once you have them all prepared and assembled, the rest is fairly easy. Remember that you can chop the onions in a food processor. I have used two 15-ounce cans of organic chickpeas, draining them to separate the liquid so I can measure it. If you are not using organic canned chickpeas, use water instead of the can liquid. If the can liquid is not enough, add water to get the correct amount. Serve with Indian or Middle Eastern breads (you can even roll up the chickpeas inside them) with Yogurt Sambol with Tomato and Shallot, page 249, on the side. At a dinner, add meat and a vegetable.

I use cremini mushrooms here since they are very firm, but ordinary white mushrooms will do as well. You may add finely chopped fresh green chilies (1–2 teaspoons) toward the end of the cooking, as many Indians do, if you want the dish to be hotter. This may be served at a meal but also makes a wonderful snack as a “wrap” if rolled inside any flatbread. Thinly sliced onions, cilantro, and chopped tomatoes may be rolled inside too. Any chutney from this book or good-quality store-bought salsa could be used instead of the onion-cilantro-tomato mixture.

In India, dried beans and peas may be combined with almost any vegetable. Here, I use either pumpkin or butternut squash. It gives a mellow sweetness to the dish. In India, this would be eaten with whole-wheat flatbreads, yogurt relishes, salads, and pickles. For a Western meal, the beans may be served with a sliced baguette as a first course or with roast pork or roast lamb.

Sometimes when I am in a rush and still longing for an Indian dal, I take the simple way out and use canned beans—black, great northern, cannellini, or any other beans I like. Today we can get organic canned beans of excellent quality, and it barely takes 15 minutes to cook them. Even the liquid in the can tastes good, so I do not have to throw it away. Serve these with rice or Indian flatbreads.

Even though this is called a white curry, it is slightly yellowish in color from the small amount of turmeric in it. In Sri Lanka, it is made with ridge gourd, which looks like a ridged, long, slightly curving cucumber, pointy at the ends. It is sold in Indian, Southeast Asian, and Chinese markets. If you can find it, peel it with a peeler, concentrating mostly on the high ridges, and then cut it crosswise into 3/4-inch segments. It cooks in about 3 minutes. I have used zucchini instead because it is just as good and we can all get it easily. Serve with rice and perhaps Stir-Fried Chettinad Chicken.

Here is a dish that takes about 10 minutes to prepare. It is ideally made when tomatoes are in season, but even second-rate, out-of-season tomatoes are given a new life by this very Gujarati mixture of seasonings. It may be served at a meal with rice, a bean or split-pea dish, vegetables, and relishes. I also love a meal of this curry, Shrimp Biryani, and Spinach with Garlic and Cumin. If you are cooking Western-style grilled pork chops or chicken pieces, just slather this over the top. The combination is marvelous.

I make this curry through the summer, whenever tomatoes overrun the vegetable garden, and then freeze some to last me through the winter. This may be served as a vegetarian curry at an Indian meal or as a gloppy, spicy sauce to ladle over hamburgers, grilled fish, and baked or boiled potatoes.

Here is how my family in India prepared our everyday summer squash. It was utterly simple and utterly good. The squash itself was different, shaped liked a bowling pin and slightly curled up, but the taste and texture were similar. I like to use yellow squash and zucchini together, but you could use just one or the other. This dish may be served hot at most Indian meals, and cold as a salad.

I have not measured out the spices in this recipe, since all you do is sprinkle them over the top. A little more, a little less hardly makes any difference. Serve this with curries or grilled or baked meats.

This is a quick stir-fry, and could be served with most Indian meals.

Chaat in India refers to certain kinds of hot-and-sour foods that are generally eaten as snacks but may be served at lunch as well. When I was growing up in Delhi, the servants cooked the main dishes but it was my mother who always made the chaat, not in the kitchen but in the pantry where she kept her chaat seasonings, the most important of which was roasted and ground cumin seeds. Chaat could be made out of many things—various boiled tubers, boiled legumes like chickpeas and mung beans, and even fruit such as bananas, green mangoes, peaches, guavas, and oranges. Chopped cilantro may be sprinkled over the top just before serving. Serve at room temperature with cold chicken, with kebabs, and, for Indians at least, with tea. Indians love hot tea with spicy snacks.

This is easily my favorite okra recipe, though I must admit to loving plain, crisply fried okra as well. Okra is a vastly misunderstood vegetable. First of all, it should be young and crisp when it is harvested. Then, it should be cooked so its mucilaginous quality (that is, its slimy aspect) is somewhat reduced. Look for small, tender okra. They are the best. Pinkish-red onions in the north and shallots in the south are the onions of India. As shallots seem to be getting larger and larger, I suggest that you use about 3 of the larger ones here. When I was a child, all I wanted for lunch was this okra dish, some chapatis, My Everyday Moong Dal, and a yogurt relish. You may, of course, serve this with meat curries as well.

An everyday vegetable dish, this time in the Gujarati style of western India, made without onions. Because of its viscosity, okra is never washed. Instead, it is wiped with a damp cloth and left for a while to air-dry before it is cut. This dish is generally eaten with legume dishes, other vegetables, yogurt relishes, pickles, and Indian breads.

I like to use cremini mushrooms, as they have a firmer texture, but if you cannot get them, ordinary, medium-sized white mushrooms will do. Remember that a relatively firm tomato can be peeled with a paring knife like an apple. A great curry for vegetarians and meat eaters alike. Serve with rice or Indian bread and some relishes.

One of my cousins was married to a Kashmiri gentleman, and for the period when he was working at the United Nations in New York he had brought along a manservant. My cousin let me have him once a week to cook and clean. His repertoire was limited—he could only cook dishes he had learned from my cousin, such as this simple Kashmiri staple, which we loved. Soon he was making it week after week, and it remains one of our favorites. In Kashmir, collard-type greens and rice are eaten as commonly as beans and rice in Central America, the season for them lasting from spring (when the greens are tender) until the snows start to fall in early winter (when the greens get coarser). Note: Young greens will cook faster. So if you are using them, start with half the stock and add more if needed. Serve with rice and either a dal or a meat curry.

Eggplants come in so many sizes and shapes. You may use 4 of the purple “baby” Italian eggplants (aim for 1 1/4 pounds), 4 Japanese eggplants, or 8 of the very small Indian ones. All are quartered partially—the top, sepal end always stays attached so the eggplants retain their shape—and then stuffed with a spice mixture before being cooked. For the mixture to hold, a little starch needs to be added. In India, this is the very nutritious chickpea flour. You may use cornmeal or masa harina instead if you have them at hand. All will need to be slightly roasted first. This is easily done in a small cast-iron frying pan. This very gratifying dish may be served as a main course, along with a green vegetable, some dal (such as Black Beans), rice, and a yogurt relish. It would also go well with hearty chicken and lamb curries.

In North India, greens are often cooked simply, with ginger, garlic, and chili powder or green chilies. Indians love eating greens at all meals. They go well with meats. If you are having a simple Indian meal of dal and rice, all you need to add is a green and a relish, perhaps with yogurt in it.

This is a stir-fried broccoli dish. A karhai is the Indian wok that actually predated the Chinese wok and has been used since ancient times for deep-frying, for reducing milk for dozens of Indian desserts, and for stir-frying and sautéing. Broccoli, once unknown in India, is now found in many specialty markets. For this recipe I use a nice-sized bunch (about 2 pounds) and use most of the stems as well, after peeling them and cutting them crossways into thickish slices. I cut the broccoli head into small florets, each no longer than 1 1/2 inches—with each small head attached to a bit of stem so it retains its elegance. Serve at Indian or Western meals.