Fresh India: 130 Quick, Easy and Delicious Vegetarian Recipes for Every Day

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In her stunning new collection, Meera Sodha puts vegetables at the centre of the table. Drawing from her ‘New Vegan’ Guardian column, East also features plenty of brand-new recipes inspired by a wide range of Asian cuisines, from India to Indonesia, China to Singapore, by way of Thailand and Vietnam. There are noodles, curries, rice dishes, salads and bakes, all surprisingly easy to make and bursting with exciting flavours. East will show you how to whip up a swede laksa and a chard potato and coconut curry; how to make Kimchi pancakes or silken tofu with pine nuts. There are sweet potato momos for starters and unexpected desserts like salted miso brownies. Serve the biryani with the crispy onions, flaked almonds, sultanas and coriander or mint scattered on top. Mother India suggests cooking the rice in a yoghurt sauce. Photograph: Felicity Cloake for The Guardian The vegetables Grassroot-level support is being prioritized, and communities play a pivotal role in planning, implementation, operation and maintenance of their schemes. At the village level, the local government institutions, called gram panchayats, are empowered to play an important role, focusing on work commissioning, operation and maintenance through community contributions, water quality monitoring, and more broadly on source sustainability through water resource management – a critical area in the context of climate changes. This is a perfect finger food that can be served as a starter or as a main meal. Me and my friends stuffed the kebabs into garlic pitta bread added chilli sauce and lime Raita.

The smell of roasted pumpkin, and curry leaves sizzling in coconut oil, is enough to make anyone want to go to Kerala, which is where a variation of this dish, known as “olan”, originates.

From the book: Fresh India: 130 Quick, Easy and Delicious Recipes for Every Day

Close to 54 per cent of rural women – as well as some adolescent girls - spend an estimated 35 minutes getting water every day, equivalent to the loss of 27 days’ wages over a year. (Source: Analysis of the situation of children, adolescents and Women in India 2016) Traditionally, this dish would be made with a few large slabs of golden butter, but for the sake of decency I’ve toned things down a bit. It’s still an extravagant dish, but channel India and enjoy yourself. FIS 2023 is among one of our annual must-attend events and expo event for India’s fresh fruit and vegetable business including the cold chain Industry. This event is exclusively intended to provide opportunities to see, learn, do and explore. As per the fresh Industry experts, our event is among one of the emerging platforms for expanding your business connections and helping you stay ahead in this exciting market, i.e., India.

What I thought:Hara Bara kebabs are so easy to make with common ingredients and taste super delicious. All ingredients can be found in a local supermarket. Add the crushed coriander and cumin, followed by the potatoes. Cook for 10 minutes, turning every now and then until crispy. Add a couple of tablespoons of water, cover with the lid and cook for a further 5 minutes, until the potatoes are tender and no longer resist the point of a knife. I have tried some of the recipes, I tend to tweak them a bit, I did the sweet potato vindaloo and substituted the sweet potato for aubergine and it was delicious. The method for cooking samosas worked really well. There are lots that I'm really excited about trying and there's plenty here you can get ideas from. Most are vegan but the handful of egg and paneer recipes suggest you could substitute with tofu. Most of the ingredients are easy to source from a supermarket. Several recipes use tamarind and fresh curry leaves which I will have to wait until I go to the city to get these, but most are easily achievable without fancy or hard to find ingredients.So if you need to make a last minute meal for an unexpected guest or you’re learning how to cook then this is a perfect, flavoursome recipe with very little room for error.

To celebrate the release of Meera Sodha’s hotly anticipated cookbook, Fresh India, a team of Happy Foodies have been cooking from the book all week. Find out how they got on with Meera’s recipes in their kitchens at home.

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Spicewise, biryani tends to be a fairly delicate dish: sweet garam masala is common, along with a little turmeric for colour, cumin and a bit of chilli powder. Fearnley-Whittinstall adds ground coriander and cinnamon, but I’m going to keep it fairly simple. However, I do like the saffron used in both his and the Dishoom recipe, which makes the dish feel gratifyingly regal, as well as taste wonderful. Dishoom infuses butter and cream with it and then pours it over the top of the rice before cooking, which adds an extra touch of decadence, although I think in a non-restaurant context, milk will do the same job just fine. It is under the latter that in August 2019, the Prime Minister announced the Government of India’s commitment to provide piped water supply to every household in the country by 2024 with a new national flagship programme – the Jal Jeevan (Water for life) Mission. This is the best cookbook I've ever used. Recipes are all excellent, easy to follow and adapt to available ingredients. Has introduced me to loads of new ideas. Put a tablespoon of oil into a large lidded frying pan over a medium heat and, when hot, add the cubes of paneer. Fry for a couple of minutes until golden on all sides, turning regularly, then remove to a plate.

Drain the rice and cook in a pan of boiling, salted water with the cardamom and bay leaf for 6-8 minutes until al dente, then drain well and mix with the dal. Heat the oven to 200C/400F/gas mark 6. To finish, there’s a chapter of luscious puddings like salted peanut and jaggery kulfi alongside carrot halwa and pistachio cake. A great cookbook with such a wide variety of traditional Indian dishes which you won’t find at your local takeaway. In 2015, India achieved 93 per cent coverage of access to improved water supply in rural areas. However, with the shift from the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) the new baseline estimates that less than 49 per cent of the rural population is using safely managed drinking water (improved water supply located on-premises, available when needed and free of contamination). (Source: JMP 2017)The rice requires some cooking before the biryani is assembled, although cook it completely, as the recipe in Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s River Cottage Veg recommends, and it will be overdone in the finished dish. Leaving it al dente, as Sodha and Dishoom suggest, is a far better idea. In general, I favour the absorption method for the fluffiest rice, but in this case simple boiling is fine as long as you drain it well, as it will fluff up in the oven. In 2019, after Prime Minister Modi’s re-election, the Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation (MDWS) was restructured under a new ministerial organogram, to approach the water sector in an integrated manner with the creation of the Ministry of Jal Shakti (meaning “power of water”), bifurcated into two key departments – the Department of Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation, and the Department of Drinking Water and Sanitation. As per the Government’s Management Information System for the Jal Jeevan Mission, between August 2019 and May 2022, as a result of the programme, coverage of functional household tap connections in rural areas has increased from 17 percent to over 49 percent. Tap water has also been provided to almost all schools and pre-schools in the country.