How to make Romy Gill's vegan aloo and gajar sabzi​

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A sabzi is a vegetable based dish in Indian cooking, which benefits from being able to use pretty much any vegetable in it, so it can be a great dish for using up lots of vegetables you've got lurking around. Sometimes we add potatoes to it, too which can bulk it out.

Vegetables here, as well as back home in India, have always played a really important part in everyday cooking.

We sometimes have sabzi as a side dish or eat it on its own with roti or rice.

For this recipe, I've used carrots and potatoes as the vegetable base, as most people here will always have them at home, so this is a very easy variation to make.

You can also have it with pita bread if you don't know how to make roti.

Serves 3

6 tsp sunflower oil
1 tsp nigella seeds 
4 garlic cloves, sliced
170g peeled white onions sliced 
3 dried whole Kashmiri chillies 
1 tsp salt 
1 tsp ground turmeric 
1 tsp ground coriander 
2 tsp lemon juice 
250 peeled potatoes diced 
300 peeled carrots diced 

On a medium heat put the oil in a pan, and once the oil is hot add the whole red chillies and nigella seeds. When the nigella seeds start popping, add the sliced garlic and cook for one minute.

Add the sliced onions and cook for around 5 minutes, until they're translucent.

Add the salt, turmeric, ground coriander and lemon and mix well and cook for a further 1 minute.

Then add the diced potatoes and diced carrots and cook on a high heat continuously for 2 minutes and then cover the pan with a lid and lower the heat and cook for about 10-12 minutes, until the potatoes and carrots are soft.

Occasionally stir the sabzi. Serve hot as a side dish or on its own with roti.

Romy Gill is a chef and food writer. Follow her @Romygill