Rasaswad

Here's a wonderful Sindhi recipe I learnt from my mom-in-law. The prep is slightly tedious (I do offer the daughter-in-law version, full of short cuts), but the result is really nice. Carrots and Methi is a fairly popular combination in many parts of India, especially in the winter months, when you get nice carrots, and each community has a different way of preparing it. This recipe employs a very interesting technique that's fairly unique to Sindhi cooking, and it uses slowly browned whole garlic cloves as the base.  It's also a technique that can be applied to other vegetables, e.g. cauliflower for stunning results (see the note below). In case you're not familiar with Methi or Fenugreek, it's a fairly common green vegetable used in Indian cooking. You can grab either a fresh bunch or a pack of frozen greens (much like frozen spinach) from an Indian store. If you buy a fresh bunch, make sure you clean it well. Ideally, you need to pick out all the leaves from t...

The basic idea in this recipe is to combine vegetables with some form of grains, both to make the veggies less boring, and to balance out the nutritional value. It sounds a bit tricky, but it actually has a lot of room for adaptation in terms of the spices as per one's taste, the use of ingredients based on availability, and even the relative proportion of vegetable and dumplings. With more dumplings, it could also be a complete one-pot meal. I do like to keep it mildly spiced to really allow the taste of the green beans to come through. Ajwain ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajwain ), or carom seeds are the predominant flavor here, but if you can't find it, you could use cumin, and maybe add a bit of fennel. You could also just eliminate it, and use other spices of your choice and follow the main concept of the dish. Ajwain is pretty strong, so use carefully. Here's a version by the queen of Gujarati cooking: https://www.tarladalal.com/Fansi-Dhokli-(-Gujarati-Recipe)-5...

Here's one that my mom made all the time, both as an everyday vegetable, and when we had company. It's fairly quick, mild yet flavorful, and borrows ideas from Gujarati and South Indian cooking. Chop a medium sized cauliflower so it's much finer than florets, but much coarser than cauliflower rice. You can use the tender parts of the stem, but make sure you dice them small. Peel and dice 1 medium potato. You could also add carrots to this, but I prefer to leave it out. Heat about 1 tbsp oil or ghee on a medium flame. Add ~1/2tsp black mustard seeds. Once they reduce the crackle, add ~1 tsp broken white urad daal, 8-10 broken cashew pieces, a big pinch of hing, and then add the cauliflower and potatoes. Saute for a few seconds, and add ~1/4 cup water. Add ~1 tbsp combined ginger + green chilli paste (adjust according to how spicy you like and the chilli spice level, but don't be shy either), ~1 tbsp of sugar (optional), and salt to taste.  Now add about a cup of whole...