Veg thali

Before you start

• three pans going at once — the recipe here is the order more than it is the dishes
• about an hour, and everything has to land together

Ingredients

Serves 2 · dimmer marks are storecupboard

• 100gbasmati rice
• 80gwholemeal atta
• 70gred lentils
• 200gpotatoes
• 200gmixed vegetables — cauliflower, beans, carrot, peas — whatever the week left behind
• 100gnatural yoghurt
• 1½ tbspghee
• 1onion
• 1tomato
• ½cucumber
• 2 tspcumin, turmeric and garam masala
• 2 tsppickle
• 1lemon

Method

8 steps

1. fold · 6m

   Dough first, before anything else: atta and warm water kneaded soft, oiled, covered. It rests through everything below, which is the only reason the timing works at all.

2. boil · 25m walk away

   Lentils rinsed and on at the back of the hob with the turmeric and three times their depth of water, uncovered.

3. chop · 12m

   Everything else cut while those two sit: potato and vegetables into equal pieces, onion and tomato diced, cucumber sliced thin for the curd.

4. fry · 20m

   Sabzi: cumin in ghee, onion, then the potato and vegetables, lid on, low, turned now and then and salted only at the end.

5. boil · 12m walk away

   Rice on twenty minutes before you mean to eat: rinsed, twice its volume of water, lid, lowest heat.

6. fold · 6m

   Dal beaten smooth and finished with cumin bloomed in hot ghee, and the yoghurt whisked loose with the cucumber and a pinch of salt.

7. grill · 12m

   Rotis last of all, rolled and cooked one at a time on a dry hot pan while everything else waits under lids.

8. finish · 4m

   Six bowls on one tray: dal, sabzi, rice, curd, pickle, lemon. Nothing mixed together — the point of a thali is that no two spoonfuls have to be the same.