Indian

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.

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.

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.

Indian black beans are different from those eaten by much of the Caribbean, Mexico, and Central America. The Indian ones are a very, very dark shade of green but manage to look black. The Central American variety is actually black. However, one may be substituted for the other, even though each has a somewhat different taste and texture. This is a recipe for dried black beans (Indian or Central American) cooked the way it is done in the villages of the Punjab. Those village homes that have a tandoor—a clay oven—leave pots of this dal to cook very slowly overnight over the embers. These beans are usually eaten with whole-wheat flatbreads, vegetables (such as eggplants), and yogurt relishes. They may also be served with rice. Whole-wheat pita bread may be substituted for the Indian flatbreads.

Known as a vegetable kurma in the Tamil Nadu region, there are hundreds of versions of this dish throughout southeastern India. Its basic premise is very simple: you parboil diced vegetables—two vegetables or ten, whatever is in season—drain them, and then dress them with a coconut-yogurt mixture seasoned with spices such as mustard seeds and whole dried chilies. All vegetables are fair game—eggplants, zucchini, squashes, peas, carrots, potatoes, cauliflower, pumpkins.… The motto of this dish seems to be “What have you got? I can use it.” It is also quite delicious. Grated fresh coconut is now sold in a frozen form at most South and Southeast Asian stores. If you wish to use unsweetened, desiccated coconut instead, soak 2 1/2 tablespoons in warm water to barely cover, let that sit for an hour, and then proceed with the recipe. In the South it is generally eaten at room temperature—balmy—with rice and legumes, but I often serve it in the summer, when my garden is at its most productive, as a salad/ vegetable dish that accompanies Indian or Western meats.

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.

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.

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.

This is a Delhi/Uttar Pradesh–style dish. I like to use very small, waxy potatoes, each cut in half. If they are larger, you will just have to dice them. The potatoes hold together best if you boil them whole and let them cool at room temperature before you peel and cut them. We generally serve this curry with Indian flatbreads or with the puffed-up pooris. Pickles and chutneys are served alongside. This combination is very popular in North India for breakfast. Sips of hot milky tea ease the spicy potatoes down nicely.

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

We eat these potatoes with our eggs on Sundays, with our Indian meals, and also with our more Western roasts and grills. They are versatile and good.

A southern potato curry from the Chennai region. In Chennai, this would be served with rice, and in the north, with a flatbread. Dal and vegetables should be added to the meal.

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.

This is a richer, nuttier variation on the last recipe.