Camellia Panjabi has spent the last 25 years thinking about creating a book dedicated to the often ignored ingredient on most menus: the humble vegetable. She has finally brought this thought to fruition with Vegetables: The Indian Way (published by Penguin Random House), a cookbook that champions 120 recipes from across the country. “Most people, even if they are non-vegetarian, have most part of their meals vegetarian, whether vegetables, dals, or grains. But not enough attention has been given to make them more attractive,” says the restaurateur and author of the bestselling 50 Great Curries of India.
A Cambridge Economics graduate, Camellia went on to establish Britain’s oldest Indian restaurant, Veeraswamy, and others such as Bombay Brasserie, Chutney Mary, Amaya and Masala Zone, also in the UK. “More attention has been paid to progressing non-vegetarian items in terms of novelty and ideas. Most restaurants in the world feature vegetables at the end of a menu, under a section called ‘sides’. I am also guilty of doing this in my hotel career,” confesses the 84-year-old.
How is the book different from other cookbooks on Indian cuisine, and what does it bring to the table for seasoned Indian cooks? “It is different in many respects,” she says, “No cookbooks describe the entire range of vegetables, 30 in this case, and none look at the entire health profile of each vegetable ie nutrition elements, carbohydrate content, fibre content, effect on gut health, and calories.” The recipes are categorised by how vegetables grow: underground ones such as sweet potatoes, turnips, and carrots; underwater ones like lotus stem, and water chestnut; those like broccoli and pumpkin that grow on the ground; gourds and cucumbers that grow on vines and shrubs; and tree-grown variants like drumstick and banana flowers.
Masala mango curry
Each recipe comes with related information on ingredients, an analysis of eight kinds of cooking oils, covering the entire aspects of dairy and ghee, Indian superfoods, to name a few. “My mother (who was a doctor) discussed the idea with me about 25 years ago. I found it fascinating because each vegetable attracts different types of nutrition elements based on how it grows.”
All the recipes featured in the book have been collected over five decades, and are of dishes she has found “unusual or excellent”. “My job with Taj hotels involved travelling all over India and many parts of the world. I also had the opportunity to watch outstanding housewives, party caterers, chefs, great cooks, and street food sellers,” says Camellia, who worked with the Taj Group of Hotels for three decades.
Tomato rasam
Most recipes were re-tried by professional chefs who work in her London restaurants, especially during the pandemic when they were closed. “These recipes were not tried in our restaurant kitchens which have powerful equipment, but in their own homes in household quantities. That’s why these recipes actually work,” says Camellia, who adds that none of the vegetables were particularly challenging to cook with as the recipes were thorough. “It’s a question of perfecting small things like timings, additional taste imparting ingredients, getting texture right and the correct amount of salt. Most importantly, explaining a recipe so clearly that even those who don’t cook can succeed,” she says, adding that she initially started off with 250 recipes, and then edited them to the final 120, and a few now feature on her restaurant menus in the UK.
Aubergine pickle
Camellia explains how she took a year to write the book. “I did it by hand. I kept rechecking the facts as I was writing about the origins and nutrition of vegetables and the use of different metals to cook and serve food. I wrote it during the pandemic when I went on a short trip to London, but could not return for over a year. There were no other diversions then and I used to spend close to eight hours every day at the desk,” says Camellia. Photography was done over several months, as the team was trying to find the appropriate serveware for each dish.
The book’s cover
With Vegetables: The Indian Way, she wants to bring the “Indian way of cooking so many vegetables into people’s daily lives and build an appreciation of vegetables cooked to traditional taste but brought forward in some ways into a modern style”. Camellia says Indian youth think that Indian food is not as “cool” as Japanese or Italian. “It is true that we haven’t moved ahead enough in creating and disseminating the possibilities of Indian cuisine, which to me is the greatest cuisine in the world, for its thorough understanding of health, traditional knowledge and variety and complexity of taste. I hope this book will be of help also to food lovers, young aspiring chefs and nutritionists, and fill some gaps in their quest for knowledge,” she concludes.
Priced at ₹1,999, the book is available online
Published – November 03, 2025 03:29 pm IST