Derived from the Bengali language, jalfrezi simply means hot fry. The dish, usually made with a main ingredient like chicken, shrimp or paneer with the quick addition of onions and peppers was created by Chinese laborers who came to India to work on tea plantations.

Almost four decades ago, a friend had invited me to lunch at a café, where a handsome tall upright popover dazzled me, with its wobbly eggy hollow interior. I cannot but reminisce now with a smile at how my pace would quicken salivating over the buttery popover melting in my mouth. The beauty of a popover is in its short but glorious life, best consumed within 30 minutes of emerging from the oven. 

Ginger and cloves add remarkable depth, while cumin, garlic and black pepper create a warming complexity that lingers even when the soup is served cold.

All most of us are looking for is a couple of sweet satisfying bites to end a meal. Here is something that is simple to make, does not require a stand mixer and that highlights the flavor of local summer fruit.

If you do not have an outdoor smoker, you can still smoke inside your house. It just takes some effort and getting wood chips to burn and create smoke. Here is a simple recipe using our house made BBQ sauce.

Pepper season is alive and thriving in Houston right now. Purple potatoes tend to be less sweet and starchy than regular sweet potatoes which makes them a delicious accompaniment to the tangy peppers.

There are many ways to enjoy gai lin; stir fry it in sesame oil with garlic and ginger, mince it and add it to a rice pilaf or noodles. Here, I steamed it in a bamboo steamer, sprinkled it with salt and cardamom and served it with quickly pureed herb yogurt.

For almost two decades, I had given up iceberg lettuce mainly due to its low nutritional benefits compared to other lettuces. Now, I add a little bit of iceberg to many of my salads and the crunch is pretty glorious.

Saffron adds incredible depth and richness to this simple breakfast. Ghee is optional but highly recommended at the finish.

Borani has earned a place in my heart and may even have nudged raita aside.

I am here to share this perfect rice recipe with you! The best part is that not only does one end up with a great pot of rice, this method conserves time and energy, two of our most dwindling resources.

A couple of weeks back, a customer with a great green thumb dropped off a bunch of these limes ~ I had never set my eyes on them previously and was immediately intrigued by their peculiar rind and intoxicated by their aroma.

The trick to making this dal right is to cook the lentils long and slow until they become creamy in texture entirely on their own. Then add all the seasonings, sit back and relish!

As a,way to incorporate more sesame seeds into my diet, I devised this simple mixture to top off a salad, morning oatmeal, or stir into a pot of rice.

Here is a sabzi inspired by the glorious cuisine of Gujarat, a western province in India where I was born and raised. I cooked the sabzi in peanut oil and used seasonings like asafetida, as one would use in Gujarat; however, I have provided you with substitutions that also work well.

When combined with the earthy flavor of fresh turmeric and the haunting note of cloves, this is a healing soup if there ever was one!

There is nothing quite like a simple sheet pan chicken dinner to put one’s mind at ease. Prep time takes less than 20 minutes (and you can do that ahead of time also), the oven does the cooking, and you can pair it with a large green salad, or a bowl of steamed rice and dinner is served!

Channa usually refers to garbanzo beans, and you could use the common white or the black variety. Having cooked and seasoned garbanzo beans in the refrigerator is like have a semi-serious meal a few minutes away.

A good source of nutrients including collagen, bone broth helps hydration as well as skin elasticity. While most people’s food choices have become highly specific, bone broth is still popular, especially during this colder weather. Here s a way to make bone broth tastier by amping it up with aromatic spices and herbs.

When I ripen some persimmons at home, I whip the puree into the blender with grated ginger and salt. Whipping the puree gives it an airy almost custardy texture, with no sugar or dairy added.

From cabbage to tomatoes to herbs, the flavor of the vegetables just amplifies the flavor of the rice, especially if using long grain basmati rice.

Native to central and Southern Mexico, guajes (pronounced wahes) are the tangy edible flat green legume inside long slender pods. Here is a simple preparation of these interesting, delicious beans with eggs.

While you can usually barely taste the vegetable mixed with the meat, in the case of the smoked eggplants, the beautiful smokiness with distinct in every bite of the meatball. Eggplants already have a meaty flavor so alongside meat, that flavor is amplified.

From Native American cooking to French fries to being using as biodiesel, beef tallow has been around for centuries. Tallow is the liquid shortening rendered when cooking down the fat from beef or other such animals. Shunned for its high saturated fat content for years, it is now back in fashion due to various high fat diets. When the young man we were buying Wagyu meat from at the restaurant handed me tallow skin cream scented with lavender, I realized how far the use of tallow had come. While I would not recommend regular use of tallow, it can make for a very tasty fat over roasted vegetables or potatoes for special occasions. For the holidays coming up, do try this recipe. Use a mixture of small red, yellow, fingerling, sweet and purple potatoes. Boil the potatoes the day before ~ this will give you the best results for the roasted potatoes as they are much easier to cut when cold.

You don’t have to be from India to celebrate Diwali. Make this super easy tapioca pudding and invite a friend or a neighbor over to celebrate Diwali with you. Ask your friends from India as to how they celebrate Diwali, as it is done very differently around the country. Or, have a Diwali block party and share sweets with anyone and everyone around you. Or take it over to a neighbor and spread the cheer…

There is nothing that symbolizes the beginning of life and the sweetness of humanity more than apples, especially when they are roasted in ghee and drizzled with honey and fresh cream. Consider it one of life’s simple pleasures and this is the time to indulge.

A simple accompaniment to a Indo-Chinese dish or just enjoy it on your own! You can use vegetables of your choice like zucchini, asparagus, spinach, celery or fennel. Just be careful when preparing it so the vegetables maintain their bright color and don’t get overcooked.

We are heading to the end of okra season here in Houston. Enjoy this stew on its own or with a bowl of steamed rice, tortillas or a roti.

Here is a novel version that is not one for the purists. I switch out the croutons for crispy herbed potatoes, which are just as much if not tastier. I also switched out the anchovies for fish sauce and topped the salad off with fresh pomegranates.

A simple aromatic fish stew with green mango being the star of the show, there are many ways to cook it. In this recipe, I finished the stew with seasoned minced green mango, but you could add large chunks to the stew while adding the fish or puree it into the sauce.

Lemon rice has a long and rich history in the cuisine of southern India, with several mentions in medieval cookbooks. I encountered it first a few years ago on a visit to Bengaluru and have made several variations since.

Chinese Indian mashup has a very special place in India. Today, many restaurants in India have a Chinese Indian section and the sweet corn soup has been a staple for decades. It’s one of my favorite nostalgic food memories and you can eat the soup many which ways.

Father’s Day is only four days away and I am here to share a surefire recipe for the man in your family. This recipe leaves a lot of room for imagination and allows for limitless variation.

Goa is the only part of India where pork is consumed quite heavily.

The corn, celery and the beans only take on more flavor as they rest in the refrigerator, ready to turn into lunch, dinner or a small snack. Add a minced serrano to give it some heat.

Sweet potatoes are not only a healthy starch source, but they are also nutritious, and pack necessary doses of minerals and vitamins A & C. I love to hit these potatoes with a strong note of savoriness to offset their inherent sweetness.

It is zucchini season in Texas and it’s time for us to find new ways to enjoy it. The beauty of zucchini is that it inherently has such a mild flavor, almost like a blank canvas, that it takes on the flavor of whatever you add to it.

Last week I was asked to cook a luncheon for a few chefs from the Houston area. This roasted asparagus with blackberry chutney was the course they commented the most on at the end, so I am here today to share the recipe with you, since it can be easily replicated at home.

Passover, or the ‘pilgrimage of the passing over’, a major Jewish holiday is around the corner. A delicious condiment called Charoset (or Haroset), usually made with apples, walnuts and kosher wine is a fixture on the Seder plate and symbolizes the mortar used by Hebrew slaves to build Egyptian structures.

Here is a simple recipe for roasting Lion’s Mane mushrooms with onions and a few seasonings.

During my childhood, my mother would start preparing for Holi a few days before by making savory and sweet snacks. One of my favorite snacks was mathi, a salty deep-fried cracker usually spiced with black pepper.

Here are dates stuffed with a savory mixture of chèvre with a touch of minced serrano pepper to bring up the heat and aromatic minced mint leaves.

In the spirit of starting new customs this year, I wanted to explore eating vegetables I tend to shy away from, and green beans is one of them. They need to be cooked long and slow to extract their best flavor so here they are braised with ghee and a little bit of water.

A huge platter of simple raw and cooked vegetables accompanied by a peanut sauce. Sometimes, it includes boiled eggs, sprouts or tofu.

Braised in coconut oil and coconut milk gives them a touch of slight sweetness that balances the bitterness in the greens. Add a dash of lime for contrast and you have hearty plant-based greens that are rich and deeply flavorful.

The humble eggplant does not have a lot going for it. It’s in the nightshade family and compared to many other vegetables, it is low in nutrients and can be quite bitter. But it does have a tremendous capacity to absorb flavor and what it lacks in nutrients, it makes up in taste.

Go ahead, surprise your family and serve this with your Thanksgiving meal – it might become a tradition! You may serve this warm or at room temperature or even tossed into a salad.

From the Persian sambusak, a crisp filled baked pastry and the precursor to the samosa, to the Lebanese sfeeha, open faced square meat pies, there exists a whole family of savory snacks worth getting to know. My current favorite is the fatayer, a triangular baked pastry usually stuffed with cheese, feta, spinach or meat that is easy and fun to make.

The heft of the vegetables and the lightness of the crumble topping makes it satisfying yet light. You can eat it for breakfast, lunch or dinner.

Today, I bring you saag in its purest and simplest form. In an attempt to feed greens to the newest member of our family, Lion, I’ve arrived at a recipe with just six ingredients. Yes, this saag will remind you of baby food but if only babies ate this well, our world may be a better place!

The Callicarpa americana, commonly called the American beautyberry, with a stunning jewel-like quality that I remain in awe of is a native plant of Southern United States. Enjoy this simple quinoa salad topped with beautyberries.

Figs are hands down the epitome of late summer glory. With mangoes on their way out and peaches on slim pickings, local figs this year are sweet as honey and filled with luscious flavor.

After eating this wonderful fresh salad, I’ll never think of bitter melon that same way again!

I love the flavor of papaya and often add it to chopped salads or Indian street snacks, called chaats.

With an abundance of local yellow and green squash, here is a chilled herby soup reminiscent of gazpacho but with varied flavors. Remember to leave the peels on, this is where the fiber rests and all our bodies could use more fiber.

Go ahead and make the chutney, then invite your neighbors over to join you on the porch and enjoy with Octavio’s tortilla chips with a cool glass of white wine!

This recipe is a foray into Indo-Chinese cuisine, and I love the tofu version (see notes & variations section) just as much.

When choosing yogurt, it’s best to pick a thick Greek yogurt with 4 to 5% milk fat. If using homemade yogurt, which tends to have more liquid, strain the yogurt through a fine-mesh strainer or cheesecloth for a couple of hours to extract the whey. The resulting cumin yogurt should be thick and creamy but with a pourable consistency. Coconut yogurt can be used as a dairy-free option; however, it may need the juice of a lime or lemon to add tanginess.

This curry is best served 2 to 3 hours after it is prepared and is even better the next day, when the spices have had some time to meld. Serve the curry with warm rice, flatbreads, or thick crusty bread.

A perfect salad to take out on a picnic and eat at room temperature or even cold. Local kale is readily available at all the farmers markets so run, don’t walk, and get a few bunches!

Venison meat tends to be super lean and deeply flavorful. Adding vegetables to a meat stew of any kind is a wonderful way to add more vegetables into your diet – here we added local purple hull snap peas but anything from asparagus to green beans would make a good option.

Local brussels sprouts season here in Texas is glorious but short lived. The cabbage-like buds, which are native to the Mediterranean region, resemble nothing like you’ve ever seen at a supermarket. And there are infinite ways to enjoy them. I found this little beauty last week at the market – sliced it right down the middle and roasted it in the oven long and slow with a sprinkling of salt, pepper, and a generous drizzle of olive oil.

This soup is satisfying on its own, topped with your favorite melting cheese, or even as a sauce for grilled fish.

In the spring, there is no wrong way to eat asparagus. Raw, shaved, steamed, or roasted, which happens to be our favorite. Here is a dressed-up recipe with yogurt tinged with ginger and a sweetish hot tomato chutney.

When I want something meatier for breakfast, I go for this mushroom salad. Satisfying and deeply flavorful yet light and nourishing.

Packed with nutrients, vital minerals, and plenty of dietary fiber, broccolini cooks quickly and lends itself well to Asian flavors. Rather than being overpowered by additional sugar, here is a recipe where fresh orange juice contributes to the natural sweetness of the dish.

Some of the best recipes happen by accident. One morning while preparing for Sunday brunch service at Indika, our ingenious pastry chef Michael Michel, upon discovering that we were out of toasted walnuts for the chocolate oatmeal cookies, substituted the spiced walnuts we used to make for a dinner appetizer. These walnuts were coated in red chile powder, cinnamon, and salt. Our regular customers were so thrilled with these cookies that they demanded we never go back to the plain one.

This is an adaptation of a traditional South Indian rice that is so delicious it can be eaten just on its own. It is also good cold or at room temperature.

One day while poring over an old book on spices, I learned that nigella was a popular medieval spice in Roman culture. Knowing the Romans ate a lot of meat, I raced home, toasted a few seeds, and ground them. I added them to a marinade for meat, and their nutty, smoky flavor deepened to a state nothing short of miraculous.

A little more substantial than spinach yet light enough to pass off as a green, bok choy can also be eaten raw in a salad, in a stir-fry or steamed.

This whole roasted cauliflower makes a beautiful centerpiece, but the leftovers are even more delicious the next day and using tandoori spices will fill your kitchen with wonderful aroma.

Ghugni refers to a preparation with black chickpeas, as a snack or a curry. Here, as a salad, it makes a wonderful little starter or snack.

BBQ masala is more of a rub, and it is not only good on meats, but also wonderful on mushrooms. Here we used trumpet, but the masala is good on any variety of mushrooms. This masala is best added at the end of the cooking.

In Hyderabad, Yemenis are known to have brought an Arabic meat broth called Marag that the Indians evolved into a simple yet spicy and aromatic soup. On a recent trip, I tasted many versions, loved each one because of the complex aroma it exuded yet deliciously simple in flavor.

Usually made with lamb meat, these highly seasoned kebabs are usually fried in butter, however, in this recipe, they are baked in the oven and are just as delicious and not quite as heavy.

Khatti simply means sour, in this case with the addition of tamarind or lemon. Khatti dal is a preparation from the Hyderabad region of India and is usually made with toor or masoor lentils. It can be soupy to be eaten with rice, just as a soup or thick and stew like, to be eaten alongside kebabs or roti.

If spices are the soul of Indian cooking, onions are the heart, especially in Northern Indian-style cooking. How you cut them, cook them, for how long, the color of the caramelization - all of this has an immense impact on the end result.

I have now made this salad at home repeatedly, with different combinations. Just like mine, I hope this becomes a refrigerator fixture in your home.

Oven roasting a head of cauliflower is the easiest and the best way to cook it given that braising it often causes it to steam and/or break into smaller pieces. Rosemary adds an aromatic touch and a side of luxurious creamy cream cheese with a shot of blueberries to smear on a toast can make for a surprisingly simple and delicious bite.

Accompanied with yogurt flecked with cumin and a flavor packed herb masala, these potatoes are bound to become your new favorite starch. Add these to your holiday table for a bright splash of color and flavor!

In the winter particularly, I like to enjoy salads made with bitter greens like radicchio, or endive particularly when they are balanced with something sweet like maple syrup, oranges, or pomegranates. I add serrano to this salad because particularly during colder months, our bodies need foods that produce heat to maintain strong digestion.

The stew is aromatic, slightly hot and spicy – if wanting milder flavors, cut back on chili powder and warm spices at the end.

Potatoes cooked in fenugreek aka Aloo Methi, is a traditional North Indian preparation and can be eaten along anything from a steak to grilled fish. Or of course, enjoy it like an Indian with dal and roti. You won’t find fresh fenugreek in your usual grocery stores so take a trip to an Indian grocer to look for it and who knows, you may discover a whole new world to explore!

Here is a pilaf where the warm millet is combined with chopped kale and cabbage just enough to wilt them yet keep the bright color intact. The vegetables can swap out for any hardy greens like collard, mustard, or watercress. The pilaf is good warm or at room temperature.

Eggplants grown by a farmer from Congo in a curry made with poppy seeds native to Bengal, India comes together here in Houston, Texas. They are ready to be cooked in an African stew or a Bengali curry.

Serve these peppers alongside a bright green salad or as a side dish with a bit of plain yogurt on the side.

Pumpkin spice, which is a flavoring that usually includes cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, and cloves has been associated with many drinks and sweets from lattes to cupcakes. However, when I think fall pumpkin, I think savory stews, pasta, soups, or curries. Here is a crepe made with buckwheat flour and filled with a savory pumpkin masala.

Millet is very commonly eaten in India, whole in pilafs and stews or ground into rotis. A few weeks ago, I discovered a special variety called ‘Kodri’, very popular in Gujarat, the state in India where I grew up. It cooks fast, is easy to digest, high in protein and rich in phytochemicals. The Indians believe it helps control blood sugar and other related conditions. But the real reason to eat it is that it is so delicious, it may be good enough to replace white rice!

Here are figs dipped in melted butter and rolled in sesame seeds and nuts. The butter can be seasoned with salt, red chile or finely minced herbs of your choice. This recipe may be simple but biting into this luscious buttery sesame crusted fig is a luxurious experience.

Almost like grilled cheese colliding with a French toast but leaving the sugar in its wake. It’s a guaranteed crowd pleaser and is quick to make from ingredients easy to find in your refrigerator.

It’s light, deeply flavorful and the saffron cools the back of your throat as it goes down. If you prefer not to have alcohol, add lemon juice, and turn it into a lemonade!

Just like most foods in India, every community, region and family have their own interpretation for it. This is a style of biryani my mother preferred but since goat was the go-to red meat, we had goat biryani.

Val, or the white beans of Gujarat are prepared simply and flavorfully in this easy curry. If buying the val from an Indian grocer, be careful not to buy the Surati val as they tend to have a bitter flavor. Alternately, use navy beans or Italian cannellini beans. Typical to most Gujarati foods, the curry has a slight sweet finish. The addition of chai masala at the beginning adds a aromatic haunting flavor to this curry. These beans can be enjoyed over rice or toast. As a starter, poured into small bowls and topped with good olive oil, herbs, minced tomato and/or crumbled cheese, they make quite a statement.

While the state of Assam is well known for its tea plantations, the cuisine of Assam has an interesting combination of many indigenous flavors. Black sesame seeds are used abundantly. When Pondicheri was in New York for a few years, a young Assamese chef, Daisy, came to work for us. One day, I asked her to make us something traditional from her home and she made us a wonderful black sesame chicken curry. I still remember the unusual flavor of that curry, mostly from the black sesame seeds – this curry is an ode to Daisy and a delicious departure from the usual curries.

Here is a chicken curry with a lot of vegetables added for good measure. Feel free to leave them out or switch them out for other ones of your choice.

Here, a simple roasted composed beet chaat gets the crowning glory of chaat masala however, most salads are good candidates for a sprinkle of chaat masala.

The biscuit crossed with a cake like topping is crunchy but soft and cakey inside. My favorite way to eat cobbler or any such warm fruity sweet is with a side of plain unsweetened cream.

Here is a melon soup that you can make in minutes and serve topped with another summer fruit like diced cherries or mango.

Laal maas simply means ‘red meat curry’ and can be made with beef, lamb, or goat.

A basic rice dish but like most dishes in Sri Lanka, it is made with a bit of coconut milk.

Borhani can be made with whole milk or non-fat yogurt and is best with yogurt that is slightly aged and sour.

Rotis are ubiquitous to Indian cooking and the ones in Sri Lanka differ only slightly. This traditional pol roti has grated coconut, minced onion, and slight heat from serrano peppers.

Known reverently as "Resplendent land" or the "The Land without Sorrow", Sri Lanka is a little jewel of an island sitting just below India. The Indian Ocean surrounding it is known for its fresh sea creatures that have been a part of the Sri Lankan diet for millennia. This fish curry is also called Sour fish curry and the sourness is inherently provided by a bright orange dry fruit called goraka however tamarind makes a good substitute. The curry is intense, rich, and delicious. Enjoy it with turmeric rice.

Here is a soup inspired by the coast of Kerala using cardamom and black pepper native to that region.

A noteworthy Nawab during late-seventeen hundreds was Asaf-ud-Daula, a man known for his generosity and a notorious obsession for royal edifices and rich cuisine, particularly kebabs. During his reign, Lucknow reached the epitome of architecture with beautiful palaces, roads, and gardens. He commissioned the building of his court, the Imambara with excruciating details, where the largest arched roof built from brick and limestone, without a single beam, still stands today. An entire team of cooks was commanded to create daily changing aromatic stews, breads, and kebabs. These are the decades when Persian and Indian cooks came together to create Mughlai cuisine, still beloved in India. Legend has it that due to his overindulgences, early in his forties, the Nawab lost almost all his teeth and the ability to chew food, yet his love for kebabs did not wane. Anxious to please their beloved leader, the cooks, using papaya to tenderize the meat, concocted a kebab so soft that it required no chewing and would literally melt in his mouth. The Galouti (means melt-in-your-mouth) kebab was born and has remained a popular kebab in India ever since. The Nawab led a short but glorious well-lived life and is buried in his beloved Imambara.

The garbanzo beans are seasoned to a spicy richness with cumin, black pepper, ginger and asafetida and then added to the salad.

The keys in making this salad is first, finding a shallow bowl that will fit the entire head of lettuce and next, to keep the shape of the lettuce head as intact as possible while making the salad.

These are best roasted in the oven and with this ocean masala on top, make for a tangy delicious appetizer with wine or a martini.

This makes a great side dish or serve fried eggs over it for breakfast.

Here is a decadent rendition of Matar Paneer, with cashews and raisins. Enjoy it with a warm roti or paratha or over plain rice.

Fresh from a recent trip to Kerala, India, the birthplace of black peppercorns where I got to enjoy them in their tender green state all the way to dried, black pepper is often used as a central flavor. This oven roasted chicken amplifies the sweetness as well as the pungency of black peppercorns.

Pickled shrimp is popular among north Indian families.