IN the North of India, winter is the season for Sarson Ka Saag and Makki Di Roti. The fields of the Punjab and Haryana are blooming with mustard greens. And rotis, as any truck driver will tell you, is the year-round bread. It goes with everything, but especially with Sarson Ka Saag!

Not only is this dish easy to make, but using just these few ingredients also gives it a very distinct flavour. Traditionally, the mustard greens are cooked in earthen pots with spicy and hot green chillies, ginger and garlic and this is had with thick corn rotis on which huge blobs of fresh white home-made butter are generously dabbed.

Sarson Ka Saag is not the national anthem of Punjab but certainly its national diet during these autumn and winter months. Just as the summer months spell the mango season, from October till the end of February it is Sarson Ka Saag time. In rural Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan and Western Uttar Pradesh they relish the dish day after day with either makkai (maize) or bajra (millet) rotis and dahi (yogurt) and wash it down with really huge glassfuls of home-made lassi. This is tradition in people�s homes.

Proper Sarson Ka Saag needs a lot of culinary skill and takes many hours to make. The recipe for making it has been passed down from generation to generation. It used to be the grandmothers' peciality. She handed it down to her daughters and her granddaughters till in some households, the cooks took charge of the kitchen and introduced their own versions of the popular Sarson Ka Saag!

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