This week we bring to you a selection of vegetables known collectively as tubers or the likes of potatoes, beetroots, carrots and so on. It brings visions of all sorts of wholesome delights to the mind but we sorted out a few based on their nutritional factors and hopefully, recipes you might impress your family and friends with. So here's to this vast array of vegetables we all love eating!

Sweet potato Kheer
A team of Harvard anthropologists are conducting a research that shows how eating tubers, and the ability to cook them, prompted the evolution of large brains, smaller teeth, modern limb proportions, and even male-female bonding.
Sweet potatoes have been known to be in use even 8000 years ago, as found in some South American excavations. It was possibly domesticated in Central America.
Ingredients:
1 kg sweet potatoes boiled and mashed (make sure the strands are properly sieved out)
½ kg powder milk; use half milk to make a thick pot of milk and keep the powder for later
Sugar to taste or use brown sugar
A drop of ‘kewra’ essence
Almonds, cardamom, raisins whole cinnamon stick, according to your preference
Method:
After boiling the sweet potato, mash it up ensuring the long strands are removed. Boil half the amount of powder milk into a thick liquid; add powder milk to the mashed potato and mix it well. Then add this mixture to the milk, add sugar, cardamom, cinnamon and the essence and cook till it all starts bubbling up. The powder milk added to the potato gives it an extra bit of body. Once the mixture has reached the thick consistency of a ‘kheer,’ take it off the stove and sprinkle almonds and raisins on top before serving.

Sweet potato sprinkled with orange
Rich in vitamins and packed with energy, sweet potatoes can offer a tangy after work snack. Simply boil some sweet potato and slice it up in round shapes. Place these round discs on a plate and squeeze either an orange, or you can use a lemon even and sprinkle some salt or 'chaat masala' or simply some rock salt on top. Pop one piece in your mouth for a healthy, tangy snack that leaves you guilt free!
Health spotlight:
Packed with antioxidants,  sweet potatoes are considered one of the healthiest whole food vegetables we eat. A medium sized sweet potato contains more than your daily requirement of vitamin A, nearly a third of the vitamin C you need, almost 15 percent of your daily dietary fiber intake and 10 percent of the necessary potassium. Vitamins A and C are also anti-inflammatory, making sweet potatoes an excellent food for those suffering from either form of arthritis or asthma.

Potato-beetroot layered ensemble
Boiled beetroot is the most boring thing for some but in reality the process robs it of its true flavours whereas roasting concentrates the sweetness and produces an earthiness to this red vegetable.
Ingredients:
½ kg beetroots
2 large potatoes
Mince chicken 250g or Dhaka 'poneer', about 100 grams (in case you wish to keep it vegetarian)
Parmesan cheese to taste
Garlic diced and a pinch of garlic paste, 4-5 pieces; 2 large onions diced
Pinch of basil, rosemary, dill and thyme and some mango powder or 'aam choor'.
3 tbsp olive oil

Method:
Boil the potatoes with a pinch of salt and mash them. Bake the beetroot, peeled and diced then smeared in olive oil with a pinch of salt and thyme for about 20 minutes. Then mash them up roughly leaving some chunks.
Sauté the chicken in some olive oil with the diced onions and half the garlic. Add some salt and pepper to this as well as some rosemary and cook for about 5 minutes till the chicken is transparent. In case of only using the cheese, simply mix the cheese with half the mashed potatoes and the mango powder and all the other spices.
Take a baking dish or a baking casserole. Smear the base with some olive oil then layer it with half the beetroot pulp. Add layer of chicken or cheese mixed with the potato and spices. If using chicken, then you can make the potato the layer after the chicken. In both cases mix the mango powder and spices with either the chicken or cheese and half potato mixture.
The third layer (in case of cheese filling the fourth layer), should again be the beetroot pulp. The topmost layer should be rest of the potato and grate some Dhaka 'poneer 'on this as well as some Parmesan cheese. Sprinkle some pepper on top and stick this into the oven until the top layer looks cooked and the whole dish is sizzling as the oil layer at the bottom sizzles.
Serving -- Cut the baked vegetable pile as a cake and serve it with all its layers visible.

Health spotlight:
The deep red colour of beetroot is produced by betacyanin and is seen as an anti-cancer agent for colon cancer. Silica is also present which helps to utilise the calcium in the body and strengthens the bones, hair and skin.
Beetroot juice is supposed to work like a tonic, lowering blood pressure within an hour of consuming it and therefore helps to maintain a healthy blood pressure, which in turn helps to prevent heart attack, stroke and other cardiovascular problems.

Carrot soup with lemon grass n roasted sesame
When archeologists excavated tombs of the ancient Egyptian kings, the last vegetable they expected to be found drawn on the elaborately decorated walls was that of a carrot! Yet, this vegetable that even comes in white and purple forms, has been around for almost 5000 years now and the version we eat now is said to have originated in Afghanistan. Traders could be mostly credited to transferring this vegetable from this land locked country to other regions.
Ingredients:
1 kg carrots peeled and sliced
2 large onions diced
1 tbsp ginger juice and 1 tbsp vinegar or lemon juice
1 long strand of lemon grass
1 tbsp sesame seeds, roasted in a pan for about half a minute or until they turn slightly brown
Salt and pepper to taste; pinch of basil and rosemary
3 tbsp olive oil
Method:
Put the carrots up to boil with salt. Just before turning the fire low on the boiled carrots, sauté the onions for about a minute in all the olive oil before adding them to the carrot mixture. Blend all this then put it back onto the stove and add the ginger juice, the pepper, vinegar or lemon juice, the basil, rosemary and boil to reach the preferred consistency of soup. You may want to leave this a little watery though. In the last five minutes add the lemon grass to let the fragrance mix with the soup. Take it off the stove and remove the lemon grass strands before serving
Serving -- Sprinkle the roasted sesame on top and serve it steaming hot.

Health Spotlight:
For those of us who hate smearing sun screens, vitamin A contained in carrots protects the skin from sun damage. Deficiencies of vitamin A cause dryness to the skin, hair and nails. Vitamin A prevents premature wrinkling, acne, dry skin, pigmentation, blemishes, and uneven skin tone.