Kosha mangsho – a Bengali curry with a rich, flavorful sauce – is a popular Eastern Indian Onion Cardamom Chili Sauce. I paired with tofu as meat substitute. It is super delicious with rice, naan, or luchi!

Kosha mangsho is a speciality meat curry from Bengali cuisine. Bengal is a state in the eastern part of India and it has its own cuisine and the cuisine has its set of special dishes. There is the kosha mangsho, which is a curry as well as dishes like puchka, which is sort of like pani puri. Bengali desserts include dishes like rasgulla and sandesh mishti.

There is a lot of seafood in Bengali cuisine, and the vegetable curries in this region are made differently. You can find some delicious Bengali curries already on the blog, like chapor ghonto(lentil stew with dumplings)and charchari (veggie stir fry).

The kosha mangsho we are making today is a vegan version of a meaty, Bengali mutton curry. Kosha means slow roasting and mangsho means meat, so for the traditional dish, you’d slow roast the sauce for a while, then add the meat to it and slow roast that as well, so the meat browns and picks up all of the amazing flavors from the sauce.

For the vegan version, we are going to brown our onions really well, so that we can use up all of that color and flavor of caramelization. Tofu is our meat substitute, but you can use other meat substitutes, as well, such as vegan chicken, vegan beef, vegan goat (if you can find it), and use those instead. You can also use chickpea flour tofu or just add some white beans or chickpeas to the sauce.

So much of the flavor is in the sauce that you won’t miss the meat!

Like many of the other regional Indian dishes, this one also uses a lot of whole spices, so use whichever spices you have on hand. If you are missing a spice here and there, it’s not going to take away from the dish. There’s plenty of flavor overall in this recipe.

This curry is a part of my Eastern Indian menu for Diwali! This year I am sharing 4 regional menus for your Indian dinner party. Regional Indian food often gets overlooked in the midst of the popular options, so try these recipes celebrating the many cuisines within Indian cuisine! You can find these fabulous recipes and menus on my YouTube channel here. Happy Diwali!

Why You’ll Love Kosha Mangsho

• flavorful Bengali curry cooks up in a single pan
• deep, authentic flavor without the meat!
• naturally gluten-free and easily made nut-free and soy-free

Continue reading: Kosha Mangsho (Bengali Mutton Curry with Onion Cardamom Chili sauce)

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Happy Diwali! Celebrate the festival of light with these delicious, Indian Diwali sweets including Ladoo, Burfi, Halwa and more from different regions of India. Eat them yourself or give them as gifts! All Dairy-free Eggless Vegan. This post was published Nov 7, 2015

Diwali is the Indian festival of lights and one of the bigger Hindu festivals celebrated in many parts of India. The festival spiritually signifies the victory of good over evil and celebrates kindness, compassion, prosperity, love and sharing. Before Diwali, people clean, and decorate their homes. People dress up in festive clothes, light up diyas (lamps and candles) inside and outside their home, participate in family pooja (prayers) typically to Goddess Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth and prosperity. Followed by fireworks, a family get together, loads of great food ( appetizers, lots of mains and sides), including mithai (sweets).

People also visit family and friends and exchange gifts in the days before the festival, and these Diwali sweets make great gifts, as well!

Indian sweets and desserts often use milk solids – khoya, clarified butter – ghee, fresh cheese- chenna, milk, cream and other forms of dairy, but you don’t need these to make delicious desserts! I have a huge collection of vegan Indian Diwali sweets, including burfis, halwas and ladoos along with fusion desserts like my Ras Malai Tres leches cake, Carrot Halwa cheesecake and pistachio kulfi tiramisu that will please a crowd. Let’s reduce the pain and suffering of moms by choosing dairy-free options for Diwali festival!
If you try any of these sweets and desserts, do let me know how you and your family liked them!

HAPPY DIWALI!!!

If you’re looking for more Diwali recipes, don’t miss my vegan Diwali menu! It uses one base sauce to create a 3-course meal plus rice! And if you don’t do onion or garlic, I have a no onion no garlic Diwali menu, as well. Any of these Diwali sweets would be amazing with these menus!

Continue reading: 40+ Vegan Diwali Sweets Recipes

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This 6-ingredient toasted coconut ladoo is ready in about 20 minutes. Sweet, fudgy coconut balls are a simple dessert perfect for Diwali or any other holiday celebration! This post was originally published on October 14,2016.

Just like dal, there are many variations of ladoos (sweet balls) depending on the region, family, festival, and preference. This toasted coconut ladoo is amazing with the cardamom as written, or you can add other flavors of choice, like vanilla, rose water, saffron or lemon zest, cocoa, peppermint for festive flavor.

Diwali — the big Hindu festival of lights– is just around the corner! Make these easy ladoos as part of your Diwali feast. If you want more Indian sweets to include, also make some besan burfi (chickpea flour fudge bars), kaju katli (cashew fudge), mango ladoo, dairy-free gulab jamun (doughnut holes), besan halwa (chickpea flour spoon fudge) or carrot halwa this Diwali. 

Toasted coconut ladoo is incredibly simple to make. Simply toast shredded coconut until it’s nicely golden brown. Add coconut milk or coconut cream and cook for a minute, then stir in cardamom and sugar and continue to mix and cook until the liquid dries out. Cool, shape and serve!

You can use dried or fresh shredded coconut for these ladoos. Fresh shredded coconut can be found in Indian stores in the frozen section. The dried shredded coconut often is not fine enough, so pulse it a few times in a food processor to reduce the shred size so that the coconut can absorb the liquid and flavor better and make less chewy ladoos.

Why You’ll Love Toasted Coconut Ladoo

• easy Indian dessert perfect for festival season
• fudgy, cardamom-scented sweet keeps well in the fridge, so you can make it ahead
• 6-ingredient, 20 minute recipe
• naturally gluten-free and soy-free as long as your vegan butter is soy-free.

Continue reading: Toasted Coconut Ladoo(Cardamom Coconut balls)

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Rara chicken curry, a North Indian Smoky Onion Fennel Pepper Cardamom curry, that is absolutely bursting with amazing complex flavors! Prepare it as-is with tofu or use your protein of choice to make it your own! It is delicious served with flatbread, naan, or rice.

Today, we are making vegan chicken rara. The pronunciation of this has a D or an H in the second R, but you can pronounce it however you like.

I’ve been exploring meat-heavy and regional Indian dishes, and developing easier and vegan versions of those. And this rara chicken is my most recent adaptation in this series!

The origins of rara chicken curry are disputed. It either comes from the Punjabi or Himachal region(north indian states), or it may come from Lucknowi cuisine(mid eastern state cuisine). There are different stories about it, but either way, it is an absolutely delicious North Indian curry! 

When you make these recipes with meat, it requires a lot more steps as well as cooking the meat in the sauce for a much longer time. But when we’re using plant-based protein — like tofu, beans, or chickpeas — they don’t need that much time in the sauce. If you’re using other vegan proteins, like seitan or soy curls, you can cook those in the sauce for a much longer time for a really good flavor infusion. This curry has both meaty tofu pieces and mince meat style tofu crumble. Substitute these to preference.

Rara chicken uses lots of umami-packed onion caramelized with whole spices, and then you add in a rara masala blend. The black cardamom, clove, and fennel seeds give an entirely different flavor to the dish, and also there’s quite a bit of Kashmiri chili powder to add a vibrant, red color and even more amazing flavor. If you don’t use Kashmiri chili powder and use paprika, the color payoff will be a little less. Different brands of Kashmiri chili powder will have different color payoffs and heat as well.

There are obviously many spices in this dish, but if you don’t have a spice or two, that’s fine. It’ll still turn out absolutely delicious, so definitely try it. 

We toast the spices for the rara masala blend before grinding them, because it is also used as a finishing spice. It is important that you roast the finishing spice beforehand to give the final blend a melded flavor profile. Otherwise, some of the spices, like fennel, will show up a lot more strongly in the spice blend, and some of the spices might make everything taste a bit too earthy if they’re not toasted. 

Rara chicken curry is a very thick-sauced dish. If you prefer more sauce, add in more water, stock, or non-dairy milk. The sauce is simmered for quite a bit of time to get all that flavor payoff out of the spices.

One of the main reasons I’m making vegan versions of these meaty dishes is that they tend to have a lot more spices, and decadent sauces compared to the vegetarian versions. This is either because the meat needs more seasoning, or because meat dishes are more pricey (in India). When you’re paying that much for a dish in a restaurant, you want something decadent and creamy with a complex flavor profile. 

But all of that flavor is actually in the sauce, so we’re using that same sauce and all of those spices with plant-based protein. You can also add roasted veggies to the sauce instead for a really flavor-packed veggie side.

Why You’ll Love Rara Chicken Curry

• simplified, plant-based version of a North Indian classic curry
• roasted whole spices give the tofu and sauce amazing flavors from cardamom, cloves, fennel seeds, and more
• one-pan meal
• versatile! Bake or fry the tofu, or use protein of your choice. It’s even OK if you’re missing a few of the spices.
• gluten-free and nut-free with easy soy-free option

Continue reading: Rara Chicken Curry (North Indian Smoky Onion Pepper Cardamom curry)

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Salli Boti is a Parsi (western Indian) wedding meat curry made vegan with tofu. Crisped tofu is folded in a tangy spicy sauce and topped with airfried crispy potato strips! serve with rice, or roti. An Indian Poutine dish!

Salli Boti is a Parsi dish(western Indian) with this really fragrant, slow-cooked meat(tofu) curry that is topped with crispy potato strips and served with rice, roti, or pilau. Salli refers to the crispy potato strips topping, and boti is the mutton or meat.

Parsi’s, descended from Persians who migrated to the western party of India. The cuisine has influences from Persian, Indian, British cuisines. The cuisine has some signature dishes like lentil dhansak, and this Salli boti. Traditionally, a Parsi wedding dish, Salli boti has a very flavorful spicy tangy sauce and the crispy potatoes pair amazingly with it.

The stew is generally cooked for a long time . But This vegan version is simpler, since tofu doesn’t need to be slow-cooked like the meat.

We make the salli potatoes straws in this recipe, but you can skip that, if you want a simpler meal, and serve just the curry with some flatbread or rice instead.

For this vegan version of salli boti, we coat the tofu with spices and then either bake or pan fry to improve the texture, adding it to the sauce toward the end of cooking.

You can also use other proteins in place of tofu, such as chickpeas, chickpea tofu, vegan chicken, seitan, or other meat and chicken substitutes of your choice. If you’re using soy curls or seitan, make sure to simmer those in the sauce for 15 to 20 minutes so that they pick up a lot of the flavor. 

The potatoes are generally fried. But we air fry them for amazing crisp shredded potato Salli.

Why You’ll Love Salli Boti

• fragrant, flavorful stew topped with simple, crispy potato strips
• amazing combination of flavors and textures!
• ready in under an hour
• gluten-free and nut-free with easy soy-free options

Continue reading: Salli Boti (Western Indian Meat Curry with Crispy Potatoes)

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Saag butter beans — creamy spinach curry with melt-in-your-mouth beans and lots of amazing Indian spices — is a hearty, veggie-forward main dish that’s just got an incredible flavor and texture! What makes it really special is the crispy garlic chili oil tempering that you drizzle on top. Serve with rice, naan, flatbread, or sourdough for an easy, flavorful meal. Gluten-free soyfree and nutfree

I finally got some butter beans to use in this simple saag. Saag basically means greens, and the most common saag uses mustard greens. For this saag we use spinach to make a really flavorful spinach curry with a set of spices for the authentic flavor. If you don’t have every single spice listed here, use whichever spices you have, and it will still turn out amazing. 

To get the right texture for the greens, use frozen spinach and pulse it in the food processor while it’s still frozen. That gives it this coarsely chopped texture which I really love in my saag. If you don’t like any texture in your saag, you can puree the spinach with some water or non-dairy milk and use that mixture.

Choose whichever method you like for preparing your saag. Whether the texture is chunky, chopped, or smooth, it will taste amazing, especially with these creamy butter beans and savory tempering!

Why You’ll Love Saag Butter Beans

• creamy butter beans in a deeply seasoned spinach curry sauce
• crispy chili garlic tempering oil adds even more flavor and amazing texture
• easy to make with any greens you like
• simple, 1-pan meal ready in about half an hour
• naturally gluten-free, soy-free, and nut-free

Continue reading: Saag Butter Beans (Beans in North Indian Spinach curry)

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Lentil Potato vindaloo is a plant-based version of vindaloo curry with a lot less work. No need to soak and blend the chilies, I give you a quick vindaloo spice mix. Hearty lentils and potatoes are absolutely delicious in this tangy Goan curry sauce! Gluten-free with soy-free and nut-free options

Vindaloo is a popular stew from Goan cuisine, which is a Western state in India. Goan cuisine has Portuguese influences, because of Portuguese explorers that came to India centuries ago.

Portuguese cuisine has a lot of meaty dishes, and such as meat cooked with lots of wine and garlic. People in Goa took that and converted it to vindaloo curry, replacing the wine with vinegar, adding a lot more spices and a lot more heat, and generally making it their own.

They called this adapted curry vindaloo curry. Vindaloo curry paste has a lot of spices, Kashmiri chilis, and, depending on the recipe, it usually has a couple of steps where you toast all the spices and the Kashmiri chilis, soak the chilis, then blend them to make the sauce. If you want to check out that version of homemade vindaloo paste, you can find that on my tofu vindaloo recipe.

For today’s recipe, I’m making a simple version of the curry by making this vindaloo spice mix using ground spices, rather than grinding down whole spices in a spice grinder. You can adjust the heat of the spice by adjusting the Kashmiri chili powder and black pepper. This spice mix is delicious and potent, you can use it many ways! Use it on roasted veggies, sprinkle as a finishing spice(instead of garam masala), use as a marinade over tofu with soy sauce and vinegar and many more!

To make the vindaloo sauce, we cook the onion and then toast the spice mix with the onion in a little bit of oil. From there, you add the rest of the ingredients, including cooked lentils and crispy potatoes, for this absolutely delicious lentil curry. 

You can use other beans, such as white beans, black beans, kidney beans, or chickpeas or you can use crisped up tofu or vegan chicken instead. If you don’t want to add potatoes, you can use other vegetables or just skip the potatoes altogether. 

This lentils vindaloo is a very flexible recipe. All that flavor is in the spice mix and the curry sauce, so you can just make that sauce, and then add whatever additions you like to it. Also try my Goan Peri peri sauce!

Why You’ll Love Lentils Vindaloo

• one-pan Indian curry with an amazing, zesty sauce, crispy potatoes and hearty lentils
• so versatile! Use plant-based protein of choice in place of lentils and/or the potatoes.
• simplified vindaloo spice mix saves tons of time and effort
• naturally gluten-free with easy soy-free and nut-free options

Continue reading: Vindaloo Curry with Lentils and Potato

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This is Goan(Indian) version of peri peri chicken made with hot chilis, Indian spices, and lots of ginger and garlic. Roasted Tofu chicken in a fiery chili garlic sauce, is perfect served with rice, baked veggies, or pasta!

This is a spicy and amazingly delicious recipe from Goan cuisine. Goa as a state on the western coast of India, and the cuisine has influences from Portuguese cooking and from Southern African cuisine, which came with the Portuguese. This is how the Indianized Goan peri peri sauce came into being. 

Indian peri peri sauce is a bit different from the African version, because it has Indian spices and uses Kashmiri chilis in addition to the peri peri/ pili pili chilies. If you can’t find peri peri chilies, just use hot Indian chilies. These chilies are soaked and blended up with Indian spices, ginger, and garlic to make the sauce. The sauce can then be used in various ways!

For the vegan version of Goan peri peri chicken, we use sliced tofu that is marinated and then crisped on a skillet, then placed in the sauce to serve. You can use other proteins with sauce as well. You can toss your protein in the sauce marinade and crisp it up on the skillet or in the oven, or you can just simmer the protein right in the sauce.

This sauce is often used to make peri peri chicken, prawns, or shrimp. Today, we are making a peri peri chicken version, but instead of chicken, we’re using tofu, and we’re slicing it and shaping it into a chicken breast shape. You can also just cube the tofu or tear it into organic shapes and use that instead, if you prefer. 

If you’d rather not use tofu, there are plenty of other plant-based proteins that you can use, such as tempeh or soy curls. For a soy-free version, use chickpea tofu, pumpkin seed tofu, soy-free vegan chicken substitutes, or seitan. You can also add beans or mushrooms to the sauce.

The dish can be made dry-ish, where all of the sauce kind of sticks to the tofu, or it can be made more saucy with some extra broth.

The sauce has this delicious smoky and spicy flavor from all the chilis. You can adjust the heat by reducing amount of peri peri chilis used in the recipe. Kashmiri chilis are pretty mild, but you can reduce those, as well. The sauce also has black pepper, so you can reduce that to reduce the heat, as well. 

Why You’ll Love Peri Peri Chicken

• super flavorful, smoky, spicy sauce with an adjustable heat level
• Use tofu or whatever plant-based protein you like!
• If you choose to pan fry the tofu, it’s a one pan dinner.
• gluten-free and nut-free with easy soy-free and oil-free options

Continue reading: Goan Peri Peri Chicken – Tofu in Indian Chili Garlic Sauce (gluten-free, nut-free)

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Currently, I am obsessed with this Baked Spiced Rice Casserole aka. Tawa Pulao! Such an easy recipe that uses mostly pantry staples and can be made with frozen veggies, canned veggies or fresh ones. Use whatever you like and have available.

As for the spices – I know – the list is long but if you don’t have some of them, you can just use more of the others. Curry powder would be a great substitute for garam masala and paprika or cayenne pepper can be used intead of chili powder.

Feel free to serve this as a side alongside your favorite vegan protein or make it a main. Or just add some chickpeas or lentils to up the protein.

Why this will become a favorite!

• 1 Step 1 pan recipe
• Dump and bake!
• perfect rice texture
• low active time in the kitchen
• allergy friendly

More Rice Casseroles

• Tex Mex Rice Casserole
• Baked Vegan Mushroom Rice
• Baked Kitchari Casserole (Spiced Lentil Rice Casserole)
• Chana Pulao- Baked chickpea rice casserole

Continue reading: Baked Tawa Pulao – Indian Spiced Rice Bake

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Kadhi pakora is a popular, homestyle North Indian curry starring crispy vegetable pakora fritters in a creamy yogurt curry sauce. This version is from North Indian Punjabi cuisine (gluten-free, soy-free, nut-free). Orginally published may 15, 2013. Updated with photos video and details.

In Indian cuisine, kadhi is a spiced, saucy dish, often made with yogurt. The creamy sauce can be paired with fritters, veggies, papadums based on region and often served over rice. Spices and texture vary by region as well.

Punjabi kadhi (North Indian kadhi from the state of punjab), like this kadhi pakora, is usually creamier and made with sour yogurt, while Maharashtrian kadhi(from maharashtra state) is thinner with spiced oil d featuring mustard seeds and curry leaves, and Gujarati kadhi is sweeter and can often have other spices, as well. Marwari kadhi tends to be hotter, with more chilies, and has variations like papad kadhi where crisped papadums are added to the kadhi right before serving, which makes for a great texture combination.

For today’s kadhi, we are using cumin seed tarka, and for the fritters we’re using chickpea flour, which is the flour of white chickpeas or garbanzo beans. That is different from besan, which is the flour of brown chickpeas. There is a difference between besan and chickpea flour. If you’re using besan, you will need much less water to make the batter for the fritters.

The baked fritters when soaked in the kadhi, are more like dumplings. Delicious on their own and also with the sauce.
You can also make your own Coconut Milk Yogurt or Peanut yogurt or Cashew yogurt or use store bought for the Kadhi.  

Why You’ll Love Kadhi Pakora

• crispy broccoli-onion fritters in a creamy curry sauce
• make the sauce while the fritters bake in the oven
• super rich and creamy curry sauce from non-dairy yogurt and chickpea flour
• naturally gluten-free, soy-free, and nut-free

Continue reading: Indian Punjabi Kadhi Pakora (Onion Fritters in Spiced Yogurt Sauce)

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