Poori Paratha in progress, from Hebbar’s Kitchen.
My friend Minita is quite the polymath. She’s a tenured college professor, member of my local city council, author of best-selling lesbian romances, and an excellent Indian vegetarian cook. When she told me Hebbar’s Kitchen was her favorites source of recipes, I had to take a look.
You may not have heard of Hebbar, but she has over 9 million Facebook fans, 7 million YouTube subscribers and 3 million Instagram followers. And nearly as many recipes, it seems like. You want paneer? There are 10 pages of paneer recipes, with as many as 8 recipes per page. Want a nice crispy dosa? 9 pages of dosa recipes await you.
Our Smoky Indian Eggplant (Baingan Ka Bharta), based on Hebbar’s recipe.
Hebbar’s Kitchen was the source for our Smoky Indian Eggplant (Baingan Ka Bharta) recipe, which we modified very slightly with substitutions for hard to find ingredients. She alternates between calling the product eggplant, brinjal and baingan which is initially a bit confusing but ultimately a useful language lesson. (The blog is available in Hindi and Kannada as well as English.)
The recipe posts are full of repetitious language intended for the search engines (there is also a Hebbar’s Kitchen app for iPhone and Android, with fewer ads and less clickbait) but it’s easy enough to scroll down to the actual recipe and there are plenty of useful how-to photos. Next up for us: Poori Paratha, the flaky Indian cousin of the croissant. Check it out.
