A Vegan in India

I'm off to India, to visit family and friends. India is a paradise for vegetarians, and I hope India will be a "vegan paradise" in few years.

In India, the concept of vegan food is in initial stage. India is a land where milk and milk products are not only used for making sweets and some popular dishes such palak paneer(spinach with Indian cottage cheese) and Mutter paneer(peas with Indian cottage cheese), but it's also used for religious ceremonies like abhishekam(cleaning the idols).

If you are a vegan and planning to visit India, then it's really possible to explore the wide variety of beans, lentils , vegetables and spices in Indian cuisine. Just make sure not to order any of the dishes which contains the words, paneer(Indian cottage cheese) , dahi (yogurt), thayir (yogurt in tamil language) and malai(cream). Most of the Indian sweets which you get in restaurants is made up of milk or milk products, so the sweet which you get in the vegetarian thali(complete meal) is not suitable for vegans.

If you are visiting India and you are a vegan, then the blogs - Vegan India! and Mumbai vegans will be very useful. The webpage in the website, indiamike is also very useful for vegans visiting India. Peta India's website lists all the vegan snacks available in India.

Palak Paneer - Spinach with Tofu

Palak Paneer is a very popular dish from northern
sates of India. Pureed spinach with cubes of cottage
cheese taste wonderful with naan or chappathi(wheat
breads of India)

I use extra firm tofu instead of paneer while making Palak Paneer.I recently
cooked palak paneer following the recipe from
Mahanandi.Visit
http://www.nandyala.org/mahanandi/archives/2005/06/06/palak-paneersag-paneer
for the recipe.

This dish was very nice, especially with chappathis.
You can also eat with pita bread.

Mahanandi has loads of wonderful Indian vegetarian
recipes . Many dishes can be easily veganized.If you
love spicy and vibrant dishes, you should visit Mahanandi.