Indian cooking: Nutritionist Rujuta Diwekar’s wholesome, easy-to-follow, special seasonal recipes

A few years ago, I visited the Narayan Koti complex, a cluster of ancient temples located in a beautiful valley near Kedarnath, in Uttarakhand. The guide explained that the temples came into existence because of the Pandavas. “Pandavo ne banaye the (the Pandavas built them),” he said. In the Sanskrit epic Mahabharata, Yudhishthira, Bhima, Arjuna, Nakula, and Sahadeva are five brothers collectively referred to as Pandavas, the sons of the king Pandu. In India, when no one really knows who built a temple, when it is not the charity or the order of some kingdom or a king, when it is the collective effort of people, it is common to attribute it to the Pandavas. Woh Nakula hai ya Bhima hai, maloom nahi, lekin jaise har ek ungli muthi ki takat banti hai, waise har ghar, har parivar ke contribution se yeh bane hai (no one knows if it is Nakula or Bhima. But just as every finger contributes to the strength of a fist, every household, every family has made these possible.)

Indian food is pretty much the same. The recipes do not belong to one chef, one kitchen, or even one ingredient, but they are built by constant innovations, small and big contributions, by mothers and...

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