It’s a popular belief among pure vegetarians that those who prefer a non-veg diet simply don’t touch vegetables. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. Many regional cuisines in India incorporate such a wide variety of vegetables into meat and fish recipes, it will astonish the novice palette.
And not just vegetables. Fruits also find their way into some stellar non-veg recipes. I recently came across a dish that throws in a seasonal fruit with a crustacean.
The delicious Eral Nungu curry is a Creole dish from Pondicherry that mixes tadgola, or ice apple, with prawns in a mildly spiced curry. Served with rice or dosa, it’s a combination that’s definitely worth trying. Cooking Eral Nongu, prawns with tadgola (ice apples) File photo Jardaloo salli boti, meat with apricots and potato straws File photo Then there’s the better-known and much-loved Jardaloo Salli Boti — chunks of tender mutton cooked with juicy apricots, topped with that always-welcome crunch of crispy potato straws.
If you consider ‘share-of-plate’, the items that constitute a non-vegetarian spread may actually surprise most. Growing up in a non-vegetarian household, I can safely say that no meal ever lacked representation of flora. The main was a meat or fish but the ‘side-dish’ was always a vegetable.
I know of many people who refuse to eat a meal if the vegetarian dish isn’t part of the milieu, simply because the meal feels incomplete. Of course, the running in-joke among the Pa.
