Vegetarian recipes from Nepal

Meatless Nepali cooking is organised around a meal pattern rather than a list of dishes: dal bhat, rice with lentil soup, is eaten twice a day with a seasonal vegetable and a condiment. The lentils change with altitude and season, from black gram to split peas; the fat is mustard oil, whose sharp bitterness marks almost everything, and the basic aromatics are few: garlic, ginger, turmeric, cumin, and jimbu, a dried mountain chive fried before the soup is poured in.

The condiment is part of the meal, not an extra: radish mula ko achar supplies acidity and salt, while bhatmas sadheko of roasted soybeans gives crunch and protein in a cold salad sharpened with lemon. Pulses return as a dish in their own right with kwati, a soup of nine sprouted beans cooked on one fixed date at the end of summer. Sweet frying stays rare and tied to festivals: sel roti, a ring of fried rice batter, is made for Tihar and for weddings.