Vegetarian recipes from India

Meatless Indian cooking rests on three pillars: a grain, a pulse and a scented fat. In the north, wheat makes the flatbreads and fried breads that go with chole bhature; in the south, rice fermented with black gram becomes batter for griddled and steamed cakes, as in masala dosa or idli sambar. Pulses carry the protein: red lentils in dal tadka, kidney beans in rajma, chickpeas in chana masala. The founding gesture is the tadka: cumin, mustard seed or fenugreek popped in ghee or oil, then poured into the dish at the end of cooking.

A meal is not built as a sequence of courses but as one composed plate: rice or bread, a soupy pulse, one or two dry pan-cooked vegetables, a sour condiment and something dairy. aloo gobi and baingan bharta fill the dry vegetable slot, while palak paneer brings the fresh cheese that replaces meat without imitating it. Breakfast and light meals have their own repertoire, built on semolina or flattened rice: upma, poha, or the rice-and-lentil khichdi also served to the convalescent.