Fresh Vegetables, page 2

Most of what makes South Asian vegetable cooking distinctive is simply not on a supermarket shelf. Snake gourd, ridge gourd, bitter gourd and ash gourd each behave differently in the pan, drumsticks need a long simmer to give up their flavour to a sambar, and plantain, cassava and yam want boiling before anything else happens to them. Get those wrong at the shop and the dish is wrong before you start.

How it is cooked

A good deal of it comes down to a tempering and a short cook: mustard seeds and curry leaves in hot oil, then the vegetable cut small, turmeric, a little chilli, and coconut at the end. Gourds give up water and need no help; roots want salt and time. Bitter gourd is salted and rested before frying to take the edge off. Green chillies and ginger go into almost everything, which is why they are worth buying little and often instead of in bulk.

Choosing and storing

Gourds should feel heavy and firm with taut skin, and a drumstick should snap cleanly instead of bending. Keep gourds and leafy vegetables in the fridge and roots somewhere cool and dark, and do not wash anything until you are ready to cook it, since water on the skin is what starts it going.

For the tempering itself, the spices and masalas department has the mustard seed, turmeric and curry powder these dishes run on, and oils and ghee has the coconut and gingelly oil that give them their accent.