Del-icious!: As promised - Indian feast with vegetable dishes

When some friends of ours accepted a dinner invitation recently, I was extra excited as one of them is a (semi) vegetarian. This always provides a challenge. I remember the thank you meal I cooked for my math 'tutor' in honour of him helping me pass an exam that finally got me into teacher training college. He was full blown vegetarian and so I cooked Roquefort and Parmesan mini souffles, mixed mushroom stroganoff and creme brulee. It was so good, the carnivores present didn't even notice the absence of the flesh.

This time round provided an opportunity for me to keep good on a promise - an entire vegetarian Indian feast. (There was a prawn dish, but I haven't included it as it was hardly the star).

The menu

To start:

poppadoms with homemade mango chutney

pakoras

Main dishes:

Rice with nuts

Dhai Aloo (Spiced whole potatoes with yogurt and tomato)

Tarka Dhal (Red lentils with vegetables and spices)

Panir Mattar (Peas with homemade paneer)

Pickled carrots, find the recipe here
Sweet & hot prawns (recipe not included)

With so many vegetarians in India, cooking without meat is a natural occurrence. (The girl I shared a house with in college had never so much as tasted a rasher of bacon). Their cooking is all the more diverse, healthy and interesting for it. Proteins such as eggs, legumes and cheese provide the substance, while the ever present spices, onion, garlic and ginger provide spicy flavours and heat. Not to mention the array of different vegetables they use: Carrots, cauliflower, eggplant, peas - ingredients that are often lacking from meat based curries. The contrast of textures is another important factor - the combination of soft bases like dhals topped with crisply fried onions or nuts. I tried to choose a whole range of dishes that may be present at an Indian spread: a dhal, a potato dish, a pickled vegetable, a vegetable with cheese and a rice dish.

In hindsight maybe just 2 dishes with the rice would have been enough. There were a lot of flavours on the plate, perhaps a few too many, but as I've mentioned before, keeping it simple has never resonated well with me, fool that I am.

The recipes

Click on each image for link to the recipe