Traditional recipes

Slow-cooked mustard greens with makki di roti and white butter. The taste of a Punjab winter.

Thick, hand-patted flatbread of maize flour cooked on a griddle and topped with white butter, the winter partner of sarson da saag.

Flaky, potato-stuffed leavened bread baked against the wall of a tandoor and served with chole and butter, Amritsar's favourite breakfast.

Dark, dry-style chickpeas cooked with tea leaves for colour and tossed with roasted spices and amchur, without onion-tomato gravy.

Pieces of river fish coated in a spiced gram-flour batter with ajwain and deep-fried, a winter street-food speciality of Amritsar.

Goat meat slow-cooked with plenty of onions, ginger, garlic and whole spices until the gravy is thick and dark, as made in Punjabi village homes.

Minced goat meat cooked with green peas, onions, tomatoes and spices into a thick, dry curry, eaten with roti or paratha.

Goat meat cooked with a purée of mustard greens and spinach, a winter dish that joins two Punjabi favourites in one pot.

Whole black urad dal simmered for hours with ginger, garlic and tomatoes and finished with ghee or white butter, the everyday dal of Punjab.

A simple dal of whole urad and split chana cooked with ginger, onion and tomato, served with roti in gurdwara langars.

A soft, glossy halwa of equal parts whole-wheat flour, ghee and sugar, prepared with prayer and given as blessed food in every gurdwara.

Chilled milk diluted with water and lightly sweetened, served free to passers-by at roadside stalls on Guru Arjan Dev's martyrdom day.

A tangy, deep-purple drink of black carrots fermented in water with mustard seed and salt, made in north Indian homes each winter.

Whole-wheat flour roasted in ghee and mixed with sugar, edible gum, dry fruits and seeds, eaten in winter and given to new mothers.

Round winter sweets of roasted flaxseed and wheat flour bound with jaggery and ghee and studded with nuts.

Fragrant rice cooked with sugar, ghee, saffron or yellow colour, cardamom and dry fruits, made yellow for Basant Panchami.

Rice slow-cooked in fresh sugarcane juice instead of milk, a seasonal dish of the Lohri and Maghi festivals.

Fresh roti crumbled by hand with ghee and jaggery or sugar, a simple sweet of Punjabi farm homes made famous by the tale of Heer and Ranjha.

Small, round fritters of wheat flour and jaggery deep-fried until dark and crisp outside and soft inside, made on rainy days and at Teeyan.

Flaky, savoury deep-fried crackers of flour and ghee flavoured with ajwain, eaten with mango pickle and tea.

Sun-dried spiced urad-dal dumplings from Amritsar, fried and cooked with potatoes in a tomato-onion gravy.

Whole-wheat flatbread stuffed with grated, squeezed white radish, green chilli and ajwain, cooked in ghee and eaten with white butter and curd.

A rustic flatbread of gram flour and wheat flour with onion, green chilli, ajwain and coriander, cooked on a tawa or in a tandoor.

Whole-wheat flatbread slapped onto the inner wall of a clay tandoor, where it puffs and chars in a minute, the bread of the village sanjha chulha.

Large brinjals roasted over an open flame until smoky, then mashed and cooked with onion, tomato, green chilli and coriander.

Bitter gourds stuffed with a spiced onion and amchur filling and slow-cooked in mustard oil until tender and caramelised.

Winter turnips cooked down with onion, ginger, tomato and a touch of jaggery into a soft, sweet-and-spicy mash.

A sweet, sour and spicy winter pickle of cauliflower, carrot and turnip in mustard oil with jaggery and vinegar.

Raw mango pieces cured with fennel, fenugreek, nigella and red chilli in mustard oil, the everyday pickle of Punjabi homes.

Potatoes stir-fried with fresh fenugreek leaves, garlic and green chilli, a quick dry vegetable of the winter months.

Fresh winter carrots and green peas cooked simply with cumin, ginger and spices, a colourful everyday sabzi.

Powdered unrefined cane sugar (shakkar) mixed with warm ghee, eaten after meals with roti, the simplest sweet of the Punjabi table.

Slices of fresh paneer sandwiched with green chutney, dipped in spiced gram-flour batter and fried, a rainy-day and wedding snack.

Thin wheat vermicelli roasted in ghee and cooked with sugar, cardamom and dry fruits into a fragrant dry sweet.

Split Bengal gram cooked with bottle gourd, tomato and a ghee tempering, a light everyday dal of Punjabi homes.

A many-layered whole-wheat paratha made by pleating and coiling ghee-brushed dough, crisp outside and flaky within.