Mon_Apr_15_12:01:20_PDT_2019
The myriad cuisines of India all love their vegetables! Veggies are diced and sliced, grated and mashed, stir-fried and curried into hundreds of vegetable dishes
In this series, the A to Z of Indian Vegetables, we take an alphabetical journey through the various avatars of vegetables relished in Indian cuisine. For each letter, we will make a tasty vegetable dish that illustrates one manner in which vegetables are savored in India.
Before we start this round up, a brief announcement: In two weeks, we will come to the Q of Indian vegetables. Now, Q is a very cha llenging letter, so I have built in a loophole. Q is for Quick, so recipes with the prefix "quick" will be welcomed as entries. If you have a favorite quick Indian/ Indian-inspired recipe involving vegetables, please do consider participating. Do you *have* to send in "Q for quick" entries? Absolutely not! If you want to get creative and make other Q recipes or use other Q words, please do so, I would love to see what else you awesome bloggers can come up with.
The "O" of Indian Vegetables
The letter O inspired twenty-two outstanding Indian flavors!
Let's start with three O vegetables. They have a reputation for being pungent, bland and slimy, respectively. Can you name these veggies?
The first vegetable is an important pantry staple: the Onion. Layers and layers of pungent flavor nestled inside a papery skin, the onion finds its way into a majority of Indian dishes. Once cooked, it mellows down and sweetly allows the other flavors in the dish to take over. Here, the onion is celebrated as a vegetable in its own right, with five delectable dishes. What's a good meal without some savory appetizers? We start with some onion-based snacks...
Most traditional South Indian kitchens always keep a rice-and-urad-dal-batter on hand, to make idlis (steamed cakes) and dosas (thin crispy crepes) at a moment's notice. The leftover, slightly over-fermented, sour batter is never wasted, instead it is flavored and used to make thin pancakes called "uttapams". Sukanya of Hot n' Sweet Bowl stirs grated onion and chilies into the batter to flavor it, then makes uttapams sprinkled with shredded carrot, corn and peas, resulting in these colorful and tempting Onion Uthappams.
Deepa of Recipes n' More gives us another version of this breakfast/ tea-time snack. She uses her onion-chili- batter to turn out some crispy golden-brown, adorable little Mini Onion Uttapams, and proceeds to serve them with a delicious chayote squash chutney.
Sreelu of Sreelu's Tasty Travels takes a trip down memory lane to her beach-side home in the city of Visakapatanam/ Vizag. She reminisces about the spicy snacks sold by vendors on the beach and goes on to make a gorgeous recreation of one of these snacks: Stuffed Bajjis with Onion Masala. I'm warning you...you will want to reach into the screen and grab one of these fritters!
After snacking, let's move on to some main dishes featuring the onion. Asha of Aroma/ Foodie's Hope creates a delightful platter of Onion Lentil Chutney, sauteed red onion cooked with a coarse paste of chana dal for an unusual side dish.
Pavani of Cook's Hideout shares a basic recipe for Onion Rice, made by combining cooked rice with some golden, caramelized onions. I can just imagine how aromatic this is, and this basic recipe could be modified in so many ways to make creative pilafs of all kinds.
The next vegetable is the pale green, sturdy Opo Squash. What is this, some exotic vegetable? Actually, opo squash is just another name for the vegetable better known to most of us as bottle gourd/ doodhi/ lauki/ ghiya (Really, how many aliases does this vegetable have?). As a conseqence of its rather bland and watery taste, the poor opo squash is not considered very glamorous. However, these very qualities make it a versatile vegetable. Here are two ways to cook the opo squash, one from Southern India and the other from Northern India:
Sheela of Delectable Victuals takes the basic recipe for a Tamilian specialty, a buttermilk-based stew, and makes it even more interesting and tasty with the addition of opo squash and carrots, resulting in this delicate Opo Squash Mor Kozhambu.
And now we travel North to the state of Punjab, where Musical of Musical's Kitchen explains that "lachha" means "grated stuff". Here, grated opo squash gets sauteed with onions, and tomatoes and a few select spices, and what you get is this Opo Squash Lachha, a great accompaniment to any meal.
The next vegetable is the subject of strong mixed emotions: it is loved and adored by some, and detested and shunned by others. Yes, it is the Okra: the tapering green beauty, with the slime, oh the slime! Well, I am firmly on the side of okra lovers, and fervently thank the next three bloggers for representing my beloved okra in this round-up.
A Cook of Live to Cook says, very wisely, that, "The challenge of cooking is presenting the dishes in such a way that even the dislikes are turned into likings". She proceeds to elevate the status of okra in her household with a very creative, and completely delicious Okra Dosa, made with a wholesome batter of okra, coconut, spices and brown rice.
Suma of Veggie Platter shares her husband's tasty recipe for Okra Dal, combining the flavor of okra (convenient frozen okra, at that!) with the goodness of dal, with an aromati c tempering to pull the flavors together.
The third okra dish is made in classic North Indian style, and is perennially popular on Indian restaurant menus. Many of my non-Indian friends say that the "okra masala" from Indian restaurants was the first time they found okra palatable. Rinku of Cooking in Westchester provides an easy recipe for recreating the classic Okra Masala in your very own kitchen, with a great tip for broiling the okra to get it crispy and perfect.
Next, an O fruit with a difference, the savory, unctuous Olive!
TC of The Cooker combats wet and rainy weather with a tasty treat, making a gorgeous Olive-Onion Naan made with whole-wheat flour and freshly baked on a pizza stone. Also, check the post for a bonus appetizer recipe for little olive bites.
Then comes a most unusual O plant: the Obedience Plant! I really need to find this plant and feed it to our wayward pooch :) ! Actually the roots of the perennial obedience plant are the source of the starchy arrowroot powder. A Cook of Live to Cook tells us some great tips for using arrowroot and then creatively adds arrowroot powder in place of eggs to turn out some beautiful Arrowroot Crepes.
We now come to an important O grain, none other than Oats! Oats, and their processed product, Oatmeal, have long been par t of the diet in some cultures, and increasingly, the health benefits of oatmeal are making this cereal more and more popular with everyone. We all know about oats for breakfast, but how about oats for dinner and oats for dessert?
Nandita of Saffron Trail shows us that a quick convenience dinner need not be an unhealthy one. She cooks oats with an aromatic tempering and a selection of colorful vegetables to make an appetizing, steaming-hot bowl of Oats for Dinner.
Mahek of Love 4 Cooking takes her husband's suggestion of trying out some "oatmeal for O" and makes her very first batch of delicious and nutritious Oatmeal Squares, a sweet treat eagerly shared by her son and his friends!
The next dish is a brunch favorite, the Omelette. Omelettes ar e often one of the first dishes that a budding cook learns to make, and once you know how to make a good omelette, the possibilities for playing around with it can provide endless fun. Swapna of Swad recreates a omelette from a popular breakfast restaurant. Golden-brown, stuffed to the gills with vibrant veggies and cheese, her Omelette with Veggies looks like the perfect way to start off a leisurely weekend.
Next, an unusual category, O kitchen equipment...the Oven! Unlike kitchens in the US, where an oven is considered indispensable, kitchens in India specialize in stove-top cooking and an oven is often an accessory. Nevertheless, if one has an oven at home, it does open up many possibilities for delicious outcomes. To give just one example, Manasi of A Cook At Heart dips thick eggplant slices into a mayo-and-cheese mixture, then dredges them in bread crumbs and bakes them into this tempting Oven-baked Eggplant.
Coming to some specialty dishes from different regions of India...
Oola is the Marathi term for "wet" or "fresh" in the case of vegetables (which is to say, as opposed to dry, preserved vegetables). Aarti of Aarti's Corner brings out the sweet flavor of the "oola watana" or fresh peas in a classic coconut-based curry called Oolya Watanyachi Usal.
Odachakadalai is the Tamil term for
In this series, the A to Z of Indian Vegetables, we take an alphabetical journey through the various avatars of vegetables relished in Indian cuisine. For each letter, we will make a tasty vegetable dish that illustrates one manner in which vegetables are savored in India.
Before we start this round up, a brief announcement: In two weeks, we will come to the Q of Indian vegetables. Now, Q is a very cha llenging letter, so I have built in a loophole. Q is for Quick, so recipes with the prefix "quick" will be welcomed as entries. If you have a favorite quick Indian/ Indian-inspired recipe involving vegetables, please do consider participating. Do you *have* to send in "Q for quick" entries? Absolutely not! If you want to get creative and make other Q recipes or use other Q words, please do so, I would love to see what else you awesome bloggers can come up with.
The "O" of Indian Vegetables
The letter O inspired twenty-two outstanding Indian flavors!
Let's start with three O vegetables. They have a reputation for being pungent, bland and slimy, respectively. Can you name these veggies?
The first vegetable is an important pantry staple: the Onion. Layers and layers of pungent flavor nestled inside a papery skin, the onion finds its way into a majority of Indian dishes. Once cooked, it mellows down and sweetly allows the other flavors in the dish to take over. Here, the onion is celebrated as a vegetable in its own right, with five delectable dishes. What's a good meal without some savory appetizers? We start with some onion-based snacks...
Most traditional South Indian kitchens always keep a rice-and-urad-dal-batter on hand, to make idlis (steamed cakes) and dosas (thin crispy crepes) at a moment's notice. The leftover, slightly over-fermented, sour batter is never wasted, instead it is flavored and used to make thin pancakes called "uttapams". Sukanya of Hot n' Sweet Bowl stirs grated onion and chilies into the batter to flavor it, then makes uttapams sprinkled with shredded carrot, corn and peas, resulting in these colorful and tempting Onion Uthappams.
Deepa of Recipes n' More gives us another version of this breakfast/ tea-time snack. She uses her onion-chili- batter to turn out some crispy golden-brown, adorable little Mini Onion Uttapams, and proceeds to serve them with a delicious chayote squash chutney.
Sreelu of Sreelu's Tasty Travels takes a trip down memory lane to her beach-side home in the city of Visakapatanam/ Vizag. She reminisces about the spicy snacks sold by vendors on the beach and goes on to make a gorgeous recreation of one of these snacks: Stuffed Bajjis with Onion Masala. I'm warning you...you will want to reach into the screen and grab one of these fritters!
After snacking, let's move on to some main dishes featuring the onion. Asha of Aroma/ Foodie's Hope creates a delightful platter of Onion Lentil Chutney, sauteed red onion cooked with a coarse paste of chana dal for an unusual side dish.
Pavani of Cook's Hideout shares a basic recipe for Onion Rice, made by combining cooked rice with some golden, caramelized onions. I can just imagine how aromatic this is, and this basic recipe could be modified in so many ways to make creative pilafs of all kinds.
The next vegetable is the pale green, sturdy Opo Squash. What is this, some exotic vegetable? Actually, opo squash is just another name for the vegetable better known to most of us as bottle gourd/ doodhi/ lauki/ ghiya (Really, how many aliases does this vegetable have?). As a conseqence of its rather bland and watery taste, the poor opo squash is not considered very glamorous. However, these very qualities make it a versatile vegetable. Here are two ways to cook the opo squash, one from Southern India and the other from Northern India:
Sheela of Delectable Victuals takes the basic recipe for a Tamilian specialty, a buttermilk-based stew, and makes it even more interesting and tasty with the addition of opo squash and carrots, resulting in this delicate Opo Squash Mor Kozhambu.
And now we travel North to the state of Punjab, where Musical of Musical's Kitchen explains that "lachha" means "grated stuff". Here, grated opo squash gets sauteed with onions, and tomatoes and a few select spices, and what you get is this Opo Squash Lachha, a great accompaniment to any meal.
The next vegetable is the subject of strong mixed emotions: it is loved and adored by some, and detested and shunned by others. Yes, it is the Okra: the tapering green beauty, with the slime, oh the slime! Well, I am firmly on the side of okra lovers, and fervently thank the next three bloggers for representing my beloved okra in this round-up.
A Cook of Live to Cook says, very wisely, that, "The challenge of cooking is presenting the dishes in such a way that even the dislikes are turned into likings". She proceeds to elevate the status of okra in her household with a very creative, and completely delicious Okra Dosa, made with a wholesome batter of okra, coconut, spices and brown rice.
Suma of Veggie Platter shares her husband's tasty recipe for Okra Dal, combining the flavor of okra (convenient frozen okra, at that!) with the goodness of dal, with an aromati c tempering to pull the flavors together.
The third okra dish is made in classic North Indian style, and is perennially popular on Indian restaurant menus. Many of my non-Indian friends say that the "okra masala" from Indian restaurants was the first time they found okra palatable. Rinku of Cooking in Westchester provides an easy recipe for recreating the classic Okra Masala in your very own kitchen, with a great tip for broiling the okra to get it crispy and perfect.
Next, an O fruit with a difference, the savory, unctuous Olive!
TC of The Cooker combats wet and rainy weather with a tasty treat, making a gorgeous Olive-Onion Naan made with whole-wheat flour and freshly baked on a pizza stone. Also, check the post for a bonus appetizer recipe for little olive bites.
Then comes a most unusual O plant: the Obedience Plant! I really need to find this plant and feed it to our wayward pooch :) ! Actually the roots of the perennial obedience plant are the source of the starchy arrowroot powder. A Cook of Live to Cook tells us some great tips for using arrowroot and then creatively adds arrowroot powder in place of eggs to turn out some beautiful Arrowroot Crepes.
We now come to an important O grain, none other than Oats! Oats, and their processed product, Oatmeal, have long been par t of the diet in some cultures, and increasingly, the health benefits of oatmeal are making this cereal more and more popular with everyone. We all know about oats for breakfast, but how about oats for dinner and oats for dessert?
Nandita of Saffron Trail shows us that a quick convenience dinner need not be an unhealthy one. She cooks oats with an aromatic tempering and a selection of colorful vegetables to make an appetizing, steaming-hot bowl of Oats for Dinner.
Mahek of Love 4 Cooking takes her husband's suggestion of trying out some "oatmeal for O" and makes her very first batch of delicious and nutritious Oatmeal Squares, a sweet treat eagerly shared by her son and his friends!
The next dish is a brunch favorite, the Omelette. Omelettes ar e often one of the first dishes that a budding cook learns to make, and once you know how to make a good omelette, the possibilities for playing around with it can provide endless fun. Swapna of Swad recreates a omelette from a popular breakfast restaurant. Golden-brown, stuffed to the gills with vibrant veggies and cheese, her Omelette with Veggies looks like the perfect way to start off a leisurely weekend.
Next, an unusual category, O kitchen equipment...the Oven! Unlike kitchens in the US, where an oven is considered indispensable, kitchens in India specialize in stove-top cooking and an oven is often an accessory. Nevertheless, if one has an oven at home, it does open up many possibilities for delicious outcomes. To give just one example, Manasi of A Cook At Heart dips thick eggplant slices into a mayo-and-cheese mixture, then dredges them in bread crumbs and bakes them into this tempting Oven-baked Eggplant.
Coming to some specialty dishes from different regions of India...
Oola is the Marathi term for "wet" or "fresh" in the case of vegetables (which is to say, as opposed to dry, preserved vegetables). Aarti of Aarti's Corner brings out the sweet flavor of the "oola watana" or fresh peas in a classic coconut-based curry called Oolya Watanyachi Usal.
Odachakadalai is the Tamil term for
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