food talk
Potato with a difference

The contrasting colours, textures and tastes of alu pyaaz complement each other,
says Pushpesh Pant

Alu and pyaaz are almost indispensable in everyday cooking. Both are considered plebeian stuff, staples fit only for the common man and idiomatic indicators of the painfully rising price index like aata and daal. Most of the vegetables in the Indian kitchen are prepared with one or the other if not both. Onions go into the masala and potatoes are almost inevitably paired with more expensive vegetables to stretch these.

There are some exceptions like the Kashmiri dum alu that does away with the pyaaz and other strict shakahari recipes that eschew the tamasik stuff. Interestingly seldom are the two encountered as equal partners in the same dish. There is the Awadhi delicacy alu-do pyaaza but is an example we think of imaginative creation not natural evolution.

In Rajasthan, they make a very tempting kande ki subzee and elsewhere too sliced onions are at times stir-fried with haldi-mirchi powders and a sprinkling of water as a quick fix accompaniment with roti. What took us by surprise was a duet that potato and spring onions played at a friend’s house recently.

The contrasting textures, colours and the simple elegance took our breath away. What is even more interesting is the possibility of playing personal variations by tinkering with spices. Whatever you do, limit the spicing to the bare minimum.

The joy of this simple dish is in the contrasting colours, textures and tastes complementing each other. We strongly recommend that this beauty be tried out at the earliest.

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