INDIAN SPICE
In The Indian Vegetarian Cookbook, Pushpesh Pant shares the vast array of vegetable-based recipes from across the subcontinent.
Pushpesh Pant delves into a few of the dishes from his new book, The Indian Vegetarian Cookbook.
India is a country and also a sprawling subcontinent, whose name is associated with an ancient civilisation. Except peninsular India, the subcontinent experiences six seasons – spring, summer, monsoon, autumn, beginning of winter and end of winter – and traditional wisdom prescribes specific foods to be consumed in harmony with the seasons. In India there are also six, not four, basic tastes – adding pungent and astringent to the more globally recognised sour, sweet, salty and bitter.
My mother excelled at transforming the quotidian into the exotic by improvising on what she had tasted in her life’s journeys. Food cooked at home was an amalgam of different regional cuisines and reflected the resplendence of a pan-Indian culinary repertoire. She was a vegetarian by choice and introduced us to the colourful, healthy, and flavourful realm of Indian vegetables.
In recent years there has been some cross-fertilisation of ingredients, ideas and techniques, with Indians happily incorporating recipes from far-flung regions into their daily diet. The emphasis is on small portions, individually distinct, and a larger number of varied dishes. The central idea remains to include all six basic tastes, and to have a polychromatic display of food. My mother taught me to keep in mind that depending on the nature of the vegetable being cooked, and the methods used, the ratios of each complementary ingredient should change.
The recipes in this book are, for the most part, simple home recipes that are part of daily Indian fare. A small number belong to the category of festive, celebratory delicacies prepared all over India, and though they are a little more difficult to master, are well and truly worth the trouble. There are accompaniments, drinks, and several recipes per vegetable, highlighting the diversity of Indian vegetarian cuisine. An everyday meal in a vegetarian household might comprise rice or roti, a dry vegetable curry, and dal, more often than not supplemented with a small helping of curds or raita, and some pickles or freshly ground green chutney. For the evening meal, lentils are usually replaced with a vegetable in thick or thin sauce. If guests are being entertained, paneer or a mushroom dish may be added.
Within this template, great variation is possible. The dry curry or sauce dish may be a combination of vegetables, while a variety of tempering transforms the humble dal. The trick is to pick any single item, and just as my mother did, fuse ingredients and techniques from diverse regions and traditions, to impart your signature on whatever you are cooking.