This variation on a classic dish from Rajasthan is made with relatively few ingredients by Indian standards. Pounded chillies are blended with yoghurt and cooked with caramelised onions and shedloads of garlic in ghee. Whole black cardamom is the lead spice here and its naturally smoky flavour is a good match for the robustly flavoured masala and softened potatoes. This is not a dish for the faint-hearted. I've opted for Kashmiri chillies (milder than the traditional mathania used in abundance throughout Rajasthan), which also bring a lovely reddish hue to the finished dish. Don't be too finicky about removing every seed - a couple of stray ones are good for emboldening the masala. Serve these potatoes with a crisp salad, cooling yoghurt and chapatis.

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Fish Fry

Roopa Gulati · Indian Kitchens

This fried fish doesn’t have a batter or crumb coating. Instead, nutty-tasting cumin, turmeric and warming chilli are mixed with lime juice and rubbed over white fish fillets to great effect. My friend Yael Jhirad made this simple and delicious snack for me at her home in Alibag, a balmy coastal town about an hour’s ferry ride from Mumbai, across the Arabian sea. She used rawas – a local white fish, known colloquially as Indian salmon, even though it has nothing in common with the Atlantic variety that we’re familiar with. Any firm-fleshed white fish will hold up well to this winning blend of spices, though.