GET A COOLING CRUNCH AND CREAMINESS IN EACH BITE
Grilled yogurt sandwich, Dahi Toast, is a tasty way to ‘eat veg’ for lunch
When Chetna Makan was growing up in central India, one sandwich showed up more often than any other in her and her classmates’ lunchboxes: dahi toast, a grilled number filled with cabbage, bell pepper and more, bound in yogurt.
“Also, it’s so hot in India. It’s quite a cooling sandwich,” she said, adding that it gets its creaminess from yogurt (dahi) rather than “mayo, which is completely unhealthy. You can add vegetables, and it’s just crunchiness you can taste.”
Makan has written several cookbooks since making it to the semifinals of “The Great British Bake-Off ” in 2014 and winning a holiday version of the show in 2016, and the most recent is “Chetna’s Healthy Indian Vegetarian” (Mitchell Beazley, 2020). Her father turned vegetarian a few decades ago, her husband comes from a vegetarian family, and so the couple and their two children might have chicken a couple times a week, but “mostly eat veg.”
“People think vegetarian is boring, the same old beans, the same old caulif lower,” she said. “But it’s much, much more.”
These sandwiches prove her point and also show that f lavorful vegetarian cooking doesn’t need much effort, either. You chop the cabbage and bell pepper, plus a chile and some cilantro, grate a carrot, and stir in thick yogurt, salt and pepper.
The crowning touch is in the skillet, where black mustard seeds sizzle in the small bit of butter you use to fry the sandwiches, adding another pop of f lavor to the creaminess and crunch of my new favorite lunch.