From the beginning of our trip, Andy and I were looking forward to travelling in India, not least because India is home to many of the world’s vegetarians and some fabulous vegetarian food.

We started in the North, flying from Kathmandu to New Delhi for a trip taking in Agra and five cities in Rajasthan.

North Indian food is characterised by curries, baked tandoor oven delights, and bread. Vegetarians will not struggle to find food - pure veg restaurants abound, and most other places stress in their advertising that they serve both ‘veg and non-veg food’.

Whether you eat in a veg or non-veg restaurant, the menu will include a long list of vegetarian curies. I was surprised to find that many of the curry dishes were familiar to me from Indian restaurant menus in Australia.

Curries broadly fall into two categories: wet and dry. Treatises could probably be written about the differences between them (mmm, what a job), but my layperson’s take is that wet curries are served with a sauce (sometimes called a ‘gravy’) while dry dishes are cooked in a spice mix (masala).

A dry curry…

Some of the most common vegetarian curries are plain dahl and dahl fry (dahl with fried onion and garlic), aloo mutter (peas and potato curry), stuffed tomato (usually just one - not so good if you were planning to share), egg curry, mushroom tikka masala and navratan kurma.

Paneer dishes are also popular. My favourite Indian dish, palak paneer (paneer in spinach sauce) was a mainstay of most menus, and paneer butter masala was also popular.

…and a wet curry.

I also liked the dumpling curries, particularly malai kofta and Kashmiri dum aloo.

Malai kofta

North Indian cooking is famous for tandoor dishes, which are cooked in a large clay oven filled with hot coals and then covered with a lid.

The wonderful tandoor oven

While meat tandoor dishes are most famous in the West, there are some great vegetarian options including tandoor mushrooms, paneer tikka, tandoor potato stuffed with raisins, or tandoor cauliflower. These are usually marinated, sometimes stuffed, and then cooked on a long skewer in the tandoor.

Succulent tandoor mushrooms… how could you not love them?

One of the distinguishing features of North Indian food compared to South Indian food is the lesser emphasis on rice and the greater use of breads.

There is naan (cooked in tandoor ovens), roti (smaller pieces of baked bread), chapati and pappadums. Paratha is a popular breakfast dish of fried bread served plain or stuffed with fillings, like potato or paneer, and eaten with fresh curd and pickles.

Freshly cooked pappadums

Condiments are key to Indian food. Pickles, chutneys, onions and curd or raita are all common accompaniments and will sometimes be brought out along with your meal.

It was hard not to be impressed by the spread of vegetarian food on offer in Northern India, although the quality and freshness of food varied wildly.

I loved trying some of my favourite dishes from home (which tasted quite a lot like they do in Australia, to my surprise), as well as new favourites like tandoor mushrooms and dum aloo. Already, our time in India was off to a good start.

Update: A reader has just pointed out that I have a bad habit of posting about food without including recommendations for where to try it. North Indian food is (obviously) ubiquitous in India, but the best restaurants I found were:

Zaffran

Address: In the Hotel Palace Heights, D- 26/28, Connaught Place, New Delhi-110001
Tel: (011) 43582610-20-30

LMB
Address: Johari Bazaar, Jaipur, Rajasthan, India
Tel: 2565844

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