From the category archives:

Main Dish Recipes

Curried Mushrooms and Peas

Late one Sunday after a weekend away, we came home to an empty fridge with a strong craving for Indian food.  I was wishing for an Indian version of Ina Garten who would load up my fridge with a proper Indian meal before my return.  If there’s anyone out there interested in filling that role, [...]

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Couscous with Preserved Lemons and Haloumi Cheese

When life gives you lemons…make preserved lemons.  I actually bought mine at the store – the stunning jar of yellow lemons with red strands of saffran dotted with black sesame seeds caught my eye.  Preserved lemons, diced up and tossed into an otherwise simple bowl of couscous or noodles, provides bite-size smidgeons of tongue puckering [...]

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Shredded Paneer and Peas

What happens when you put rectangles of paneer through your food processor with the shredder blade on? You end up with soft piles of stringy tendrils of paneer. What happens when you saute soft piles of stringy tendrils of paneer? It becomes soft and gooey creamy cheesy deliciousness. That then gets [...]

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Baked Sweet Potatoes with Red Chillies and Garlic

Organic brown rice, organic rice bran extract, tocopherols (Vitamin E), alpha-amylase (enzyme) and electrolytic iron. That was my daughter’s foray into the world of solids.  Rice cereal.  That makes me so sad.  After a few days of tightly closed, pursed lips, I tasted the cereal myself.  While Surya was watching me.  Alert: novice error.  I [...]

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Kung Pao Seitan & Spicy, Sweet Corn Fried Rice

Back in the day before tofu was really mainstream and vegetarianism the new “in” thing, I was suffering away in Irmo, South Carolina deprived of all of the wonders of soy and wheat gluten.  Even worse, I was oblivious of my deprivation.  Then my brother moved to Washington, D.C. and Vegetable Garden on Rockland Pike [...]

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Pasta with Veggie Sausage, Kale and Garlicky Breadcrumbs

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Help Cleaning Shop & Spicy Black Eyed Peas

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Eggplant “Barbeque” – Roasted Eggplant with Tamarind

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Lemon Spiced Cous Cous

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Crunchy (and Quick) Cashew Aloo Saag

QUICK is king in my kitchen ever since Surya’s arrival in our life.  Some friends have been asking me how I’ve been managing to cook and blog.  The answer is that I steal little snippets of time between naps and during Daddy time.  Whether it’s cooking, taking pictures or writing up posts, I do it [...]

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No Noodles – Bread and Eggplant Lasagna

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Lemony Spinach Lentils (Spinach Pappu)

Two huge events have happened in my life within the last week.  First, I snuck away to have a baby.  Our beautiful baby girl, Surya, arrived last Thursday and we have been completely preoccupied with loving on her ever since.  Second, I’ve turned over my kitchen to my mother for the next three weeks.  Fortunately, [...]

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Post-Thanksgiving Quick “Recipe”: Mac ‘n Cheese with Chili

I’ve been keeping Mac ‘n Cheese with Chili a secret from you for some time.  Mainly because it’s so so simple that I was embarrassed to share it with you.  And it involves a box and a can.  But I can’t in good conscience keep this combination of cheesy noodles, spicy soy protein and chewy, nutty [...]

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Tofu Medallions with Whole Wheat Spaghetti

For those of you who don’t like tofu, I want to make a case for it.  If you are already sold on tofu, skip to paragraph 2 below.  Saying that tofu has no flavor is like saying an uncooked chicken breast tastes gross.  I’ve never had one, but I’m assuming you have to season and [...]

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Late Night Meals: Sesame-Garlic Soba Noodles

We had a two and a half hour dinner last night.  I came home hungry.  Maybe it was baby. Maybe dinner was so long that I got full then hungry again before it finished. Maybe the Thai restaurant we picked, which is usually so good, was off it’s game (Halloween??). Take your pick but I think [...]

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Curried Corn and Cherry Tomato CousCous

The Hamptons – it’s the New Yorker getaway.  Stretches of highway are adopted by Sotheby’s.  ”Villages” are dotted with luxe home good stores and couture boutiques.  It also happens to be overflowing with loads of fresh, local produce AND – wait for it – wait for it – roadside farmer’s markets.  It was all I [...]

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Kadai Tofu: Tofu with a Rainbow of Bellpeppers

Biting into a piece is paneer is a creamy, rich and chewy experience.  But it’s an experience that can be hard to come by – you can’t just pick up a block of paneer from your local grocery store (unless you live in Flushing, Queens and Patel Brothers is your local grocery store – [...]

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Market Greens with Split Peas

Do you have a grocery item that maintains a permanent on your weekly grocery list?  Something you know you can make use of no matter what your weekly menu?  Something that never dies a slow death in your crisper?  Greens.  They are always on my list, and they never go to waste.  Kale, collard greens, [...]

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Locaware: Green Tomato Lentil Stew

I talk to my parents everyday and each evening I look forward to asking what they’re having for dinner.  It’s always something I wish I was eating too (which is half the reason I started cooking in the first place).  A few weeks back, my dad told me they were having locaware.  Undoubtably, a joke [...]

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Warm Bean Salad

Still trying to decide what to make for the Fourth of July?  This warm bean salad is a favorite of ours – it combines the creamy, nutty taste of beans with tangy feta, crunchy sharp onions and juicy cherry tomatoes.  The key is to get the beans and the tomatoes mildly warmed.  This makes the [...]

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Masala Stuffed Okra Boats

Okra gets a bad wrap.  I grew up in Irmo, South Carolina, home of the Okra Strut, so perhaps I have a soft spot for the little green guys.  The most common complaint seems to be that okra is slimy.  I know of two recipes and one prep work tip that eliminate the possibility of [...]

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Charu Au Poix (French Inspired Rasam)

This is a guest post written by Raj Bala, Nithya’s brother, who is incidentally also a hungry desi.
The French settled a colony in India called Pondicherry in 1673 on the Southeast coast of India. Their influence on the city is still evident today even though they didn’t necessarily fare as well in terms of colonization [...]

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Swiss Chard and Spinach with Shitake and Peas

Farmers markets really get me excited.  Rajat thinks it’s because they remind me of vegetable markets in India.  I think it’s because I associate farmers markets with warm weather and fresh, green vegetables that require sunshine and warmth (two things New York has been sadly lacking until the last few days).  An even more plausible [...]

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Cracked Wheat Can Taste Good (Really)

Cracked.  Wheat.  Porridge.  Nothing about that sounds good to me.  Cracked wheat porridge with vegetables.  Melt in your mouth potatoes.  Sweet peas and carrots.  And spices.  And creamy yogurt.  Served piping hot.  It starts to sound better, no?  Cracked wheat is made by cracking whole raw wheat berries.  This means that it’s high in fiber and [...]

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15 Minute Indian Chinese Noodles

Quick is high on my list of redeemable recipe qualities.  Although, it’s right up there with tasty and healthy.  This sometimes makes for a challenging recipe hunt.  I picked up a few packs of MTR vermicelli noodles a few weeks back for experimenting with vermicelli style upma, or semiya upma.  As I started making the [...]

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Potatoes in Coconut Curry with Mint and Cilantro

It’s been a little over 2 weeks since I’ve blogged!  I was a poor planner and didn’t have any posts in reserve for sharing with you while I was away tending to our move.  But now that we’re moved and semi-settled in with only a few more boxes to go, I’m free to cook again! [...]

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A Side of Roasted Cauliflower – Dinner Party Worthy?

Growing up in an all vegetarian household, we ate a lot of vegetables.  Afternoons snacks sometimes were bowls of freshly boiled peas, lima beans or brussel sprouts topped with butter and showered with salt and pepper.  Cabbage, broccoli, beans – you name it, we ate it.  And we enjoyed the pure vegetable taste of it. [...]

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Spicy Pesto 3 Ways: Basil-Mint Pesto Marinara

Recipes that can be transformed from one dish into another and that hold up well as leftovers are really appealing to my schedule.  I usually leave home early in the morning and don’t return until after dark, sometimes toting along more work.  So, recipes like these which make for a quick and easy weeknight meal [...]

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Dad’s French Style Green Beans

My dad made french style green beans almost once a week growing up, usually as a side dish with rasam or sambar.  We accidentally discovered that we liked them just slightly blackened when he sauteed them a little too long once and more than a few got singed.  I think to this day my sister makes them [...]

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Sambar (Spicy Lentil Soup) and Akshaya Patra

Daikon in Sambar
Sambar is South Indian comfort food. It’s a mix of mashed nutty lentils, tomatoes and simple spices finished with the tanginess of tamarind. There are many different varieties and all families seem to have their own tricks.  Regardless, you follow the same essential steps no matter of the type of sambar. [...]

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Soupy Soba Noodles

Earlier this week, I posted a recipe for a really easy stir-fry sauce with the forewarning that it’s really saucy.  It was so saucy and flavor packed that I thought it might work well as a soup and gave it a shot with the stir-fry leftovers.  As we watched President Obama address the nation, the [...]

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Simply Saucy: A 10 Minute Stir-fry Sauce

We like it saucy (no R rated pun intended – that sounds dirty right?).  This stir-fry started off as an experiment.  It was so delicious that everytime we made stir-fry, Rajat would ask me to “make it in ‘that’ sauce.” Kitchen experiments are fabulous unless you forget to write down what you did because recreating [...]

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Punjabi Chole with Amchur Crusted Aloo

Punjabi Chole with Amchur Crusted Aloo is possibly the easiest curry I’ve made in a long time.  The chickpeas are packed with protein and high in fiber, and their buttery, nutty taste mixes well with this heavy on masala curry sauce topped with tangy, roasted potatoes.  In a nutshell, you boil everything in a big stockpot, broil some potatoes [...]

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99.98% Slow Cooked Daal Makhani

I’ve tried twice now to make Daal Makhani in my slow cooker. The first time was an utter disaster. I’ll call the second time an “orchestrated” success. After slow cooking the daal for 8 hours, it was still a little tough. We were tired of waiting and ready to eat it with our palak channa, [...]

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Aloo Paratha – Spiced Potato Filled Flatbread

Warm, generously filled parathas (stuffed Indian flatbread) remind me of cold, wintery mornings at my husband’s family’s house in Delhi. We wake up to be treated to hot parathas and steaming chai. Despite our “protests“ against such a heavy breakfast and ”pleas“ for no butter, we let our plates be filled with hot paratha after [...]

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Palak Channa – Spinach and Chickpeas

I’ve been craving the smooth taste of hearty chickpeas ever since reading about Mike’s channa masala. So, not surprisingly, Sunday’s lineup included chickpeas. As a healthier alternative to palak paneer, we decided to make palak channa. Soft, buttery chickpeas swimming in pureed fresh spinach made for a fulfilling end to a lazy [...]

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Five Star Eggplant Parmesan

Eggplant parmesan is a childhood favorite of mine.  An oozy combination of cheese embracing fried eggplant wading in pools of tangy tomato sauce.  Growing up, it wasthe perfect break in our daily menu of rasam, yogurt rice and kura…one of the few “American” (i.e. non-Indian) dishes my mom made that even my dad would eat.   [...]

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Simplifying: Methi Daal

Simplify.  That’s my new years resolution (more on that later).  So what better way to start the new year than with a dish which is simple in its ingredients, simpler in its preparation and anything but that in the amount of comfort food flavor and nutrients that it delivers…Methi Daal (Lentil Soup with Methi, or [...]

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Indian Cure for a Cold: Tomato Garlic Rasam

Tangy, spicy heat massaging my vocal cords.  Roasted mustard seeds, cumin, garlic and pepper steaming towards my nose.  Each maintaining a soft cadence under direction of the nutty paste of toor dhal.  Filling my belly.  Warming my throat.  Reviving my olfactory senses.  Cold cold go away.  Please don’t come back another day.
R and I were not only [...]

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Mumbai Mama, Take Me Home – Vada Pav

 Country roads, take me home, to the place where I belong…John Denver was singing about the mountains of West Virginia but his song resonated with me as I read about prominent Mumbaiites like Suketu Mehta urging the world to run to Mumbai – not away from it in response to the recent terrorist attacks.  I agree with Suketu’s [...]

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A Very Desi Thanksgiving

I’ve never characterized Thanksgiving as just ”a day to be thankful” – it’s always been more about a day of good food, parades and family because I just don’t understand limiting thankfulness to one day.  A thing as difficult as say parades, however, I do understand limiting.  The loss of life and terror we saw this past [...]

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Chili When Chilly

When winter hits, thoughts of a steaming bowl of hearty, vegetarian chili makes the wind slapping my face, the ringing chill in my ears and frostbite in my fingers seem a little less awful.  A stockpot of it warms up our house and our bellies for a few days.  I like to top mine with [...]

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Black-Eyed Peas and Aloo Sabji

For the longest time, black-eyed peas were filed away in the gray matter of my brain as a high school cafeteria side dish likely to be flavored with ham hocks.  I might have been confusing them with pinto beans for years.  I finally learned how tasty they are after trying Guru the Caterer’s black-eyed peas with [...]

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(Vegetarian) Unchicken Tikka Masala

N, a good friend of mine who is a self-described “recovering corporate attorney who enjoys writing, traveling and the arts,” introduced me to veat when she brought Veat Makhani to a potluck dinner a few years ago.  R and I were immediately hooked on her makhani dish and on veat.  Veat’s a nice alternative when [...]

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Vegetarian Sushi…Beyond California Rolls

R first introduced me to sushi was four years ago in Lake Tahoe.  I loved the combo of rice and fresh veggies, rice and fried sweet potatoes, rice and tempura.  Sushi at non-vegetarian restaurants gives me the heebee jeebees though…I picture fish juice contaminating my veggie sushi (sounds crazy but is it really?).  Once, I [...]

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Chayote Squash Kura

Chayote squash is a curious little vegetable.  It’s slightly intimidating with its odd pursed seam along one edge making it look like a cartoonish venus fly trap or the Grinch’s balled up fist.  When you peel it, it lets off heavy beads of sweat and gets slippery.  The juice dries on your hands making them [...]

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Eggplant in Peanut Sauce

With the season starting to change and the weather turning cooler, I’ve been craving the velvety taste of baingan, or eggplant.  So tonight I tried to recreate a dish that my mom makes – eggplant in a peanut sauce.  R and I went grocery shopping at the new Whole Foods in Tribeca, which usually has [...]

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Simple Sides – Quick Aloo Gobi

I found this beautiful, oddly yellow colored cauliflower at the   grocery store today and was intrigued to see what it tasted like…I have to say that tasted just like regular cauliflower to us.  Would love to hear from anyone else who has tried these cross bred veggies (which is kind of creepy, no?)…
Normally, I like to [...]

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Soba Noodles and Tofu in Cilantro-Tamarind Sauce

I had a craving for soba noodles tonight and no time to stop by the grocery store, so my ride back to Brooklyn was spent ticking through things we already had in the fridge which might be soba noodle worthy.  My result was inspired by Heidi Swanson’s post on her blog, 101cookbooks.com (you can find [...]

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Matar Mushroom – Shitake Mushrooms and Peas

I wanted to make one of our favorites for dinner tonight – mattar paneer – since R came home after a week of traveling and is about to set off on another week of traveling.  Unfortunately, paneer is hard to come by in Brooklyn so I made mattar mushroom instead using shitake mushrooms.  I rarely follow [...]

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