© Shutterstock
Culture & Living
Capture the essence of this season by ticking off these winter greens-based dishes from the list
We love the way the vegetable markets look during winters. The peas are sweeter, the berries shine brighter and the variety of winter greens that come to the fore are lusciously verdant, fresh and tender. This love for saags is reflected even on the menus of restaurants in India, that have at least one winter greens dish vying for our attention. Here’s our edit of some of the best leafy dishes on some of the coolest menus in the country.
You can pick it up and eat it like a cute taco. The Bombay Canteen’s corn pancake has a dense bite and doesn’t taste like a plump chilla that it looks like. Instead, it has a fluffy pancake appeal that is topped with rustic sarson ka saag. They use four kinds of greens to make this topping: sarson or mustard greens, small-leaved bathua, basic spinach and radish greens. The recipe is levelled up with a coarse sambal made out of radishes and reduced corn juice that adds tremendously to create a silken mouth feel. A smattering of tempura crumbs and mustard greens finish the deal.
Known in Kashmir as lisse, Masque uses this green in two ways. For a base, it is made in the traditional Kashmiri way: lightly tossed in sarson oil, asafoetida, Kashmiri chillies and yoghurt. This is presented to non-vegetarians with ghee-poached Malabar trevally fish, cape gooseberries, suka chutney and peach chunda, while vegetarians eat it with aged beetroot (treated with homegrown koji) made in their lab, topped with peach chunda, roasted vegetable sauce, fresh pear and cape gooseberries.
If you’ve ever visited the northern most state of India and eaten local fare, chances are you'll get a warming bowl of this dish. One hundred percent a seasonal special, monjj haak will be on Jasleen Marwah’s menu only until the green is available in the markets. A Kashmiri staple, it is also known as ganth gobhi, muddi, knolkol or kohlrabi. Kashmiri saags or as they are called haaks, are usually steamed or blanched, mostly pressure cooked as whole leaves with bare minimum spices. Hers is tempered with pungent mustard oil, asafoetida, whole Kashmiri red chillies or green chillies. Even with minimal flavouring, the leaves themselves leave behind a unique buttery goodness that is a speciality to them. Best eaten with rice.
We’ve been getting Greek spanakopita feels from this dish from one of Goa’s best experimental eateries. Goan and Maharashtrian tambdi bhaji is picked from the backyards of small-batch farmers in Goa. To them, chef Sandeep Sreedharan works his magic and creates parcels, filling them in sheets of crispy phyllo pastry. These triangles are served with a Moplah style beetroot and date chutney.
As a part of their rotating menu, this dish is one of their most gram-able one. While coffee is still the top-seller, the green palak gravy that is cooked like a custard lays perfectly inside flaky pastry circles. On top is a slab of browned and fried paneer. It’s an ideal dish you’d expect to find in an India-inspired coffee shop that takes the effort to pick up influences from the region it is based in. Such a breather from cliché roasted bell pepper and shredded chicken quiches.
Kashmiri style haaq finds a spotlight again at this restaurant in the capital. It’s a seasonal speciality where collard greens are cooked in their own juices tempered with asafoetida, mustard oil, garlic and a hint of cardamom. The restaurant menu champions this winter stew for its nutritional value since it’s high in vitamins and low on calories.
An old favourite from Punjabi homes, this one is available at Zorawar Kalra’s newest restaurant that serves flavours from Sri Lanka and India. This classic is slightly different than palak paneer because it isn’t brimming with chunks of cottage cheese, instead, has ample fried garlic. Team it with lachcha paratha; you won’t regret it.
Sindhi cuisine is underrated but delicious. This Bandra-based home chef who catered for the wedding food of Deepika Padukone and Ranveer Singh is doling out lush green helpings of sai bhaji. Not your ordinary green subzi, this one uses a whole lot of greens ranging from dill, fenugreek, Indian green chuka and good-old spinach. Sindhis like to eat their sai bhaji with special onion rice known as bhuga chawal.
This dish is a marriage of two amazingly simple ingredients—buttery lobster and an aromatic spinach broth. Lobster from the southern coastal regions of India is combined with haaq, a spinach from Kashmir. It is more difficult to bring out the delicate flavours in a simple dish so the chef avoids spices that can get overpowering. Haaq has a strong taste reminiscent of a pungent radish. Chef Manish Mehrotra flavours the broth with haaq’s soulful companion, mustard oil.
One of the most popular winter dishes in the North of India, sarson ka saag is a hot favourite at Comorin. While a lot of their menu does a modern interpretation of several Indian dishes like gajar halwa tart or dahi batata puri with wasabi, this one is kept as it is. A katori of leafy subzi is served with blocks of jaggery for sweetness, white makhan for smoothness and maize flour rotis that add to its rustic charm.
5 viral food trends you need to get up to speed with right now
10 lessons Vogue India’s food editor learned about eating during the lockdown