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Gujarati ma bole...(In Gujarati we say)

Writer's picture: Khao SuppersKhao Suppers

Updated: 4 days ago

One of the reasons I started Khao Suppers was to share the flavours of authentic Gujarati food that I have grown up to enjoy. The love for Indian food in the UK and London is very obvious, but like many other British Indians, we know it's more than a paneer tikka and saag aloo (and yes we love both of these!). Each time I share a menu and describe the dishes, it can get a little challenging to translate the name or description of a dish that justifies what it truly is! And so it's not possible to do so without talking about the language and the proper terms that define what they are. 



In today's Khao Stories, I'd like to take a moment to share the key Gujarati words with you. If you've been here a while, you should already be familiar with a handful: daar is daal, shaak is curry or sabzi, rotli is roti or chapati and bhaat is rice.


Shaak

(Sounds like shark, but no r...)



Why don't I just call it curry? According to the Oxford Dictionary, a curry is "a dish of meat, vegetables, etc., cooked in an Indian-style sauce of hot-tasting spices and typically served with rice". Whilst this is true of many Gujarati curries, a lot of dishes are not made in the same way as a typical curry. For starters, it might not contain onions or garlic and there will not be a sauce or 'gravy' like you'd find in a tikka or masala curry. One of the things we love about a Gujarati shaak is that it can be made with very few ingredients, sometimes only 6-7 and doesn't need to be saucy. A shaak can be vegetables cooked in a few spices, sort of like a stir-fry and enjoyed as part of a main course with rotli, daar, rice, salads and sides. A shaak forms a central part of a meal and can be versatile in its flavours, with very few ingredients. 


Rotli

(pronounced rot-lee)


You know them as roti and or chapati. Made from wholewheat flour, oil and water, these are small round flatbreads usually enjoyed with shaak and sometimes daal. They're smaller than a naan or tandoori roti and usually very soft. It was one of the first items I learnt to make and even now sometimes they're not perfectly round...(I wrote a blog post dedicated to them, we'll link it here). They are a staple part of a meal in most Gujarati households and are finished with a spoonful of ghee or butter.



A little anecdote: sometime in 2022, I was away from home on holiday for close to 5 days. Whilst I ate well on this holiday, there was something comforting about coming home at 10 pm and tucking into a shaak made with bitter gourd and rotli. The familiar heat of the spices and the softness of each morsel, it was all I wanted in that moment. 


Chutney



Chutneys are usually referred to as a pickle of some sort, but when we say chutney, we mean a condiment-style sauce. One popular chutney is green chutney or lili chutney, lili is the Gujarati word for green. Made of coriander, chillies, ginger and more, this is a spicy condiment often served on chaat dishes or provided to add heat to a dish. It can also include mint and can be made with a range of ingredients to alter the taste, but is always spicy due to the use of green chillies! Green chutney goes well with bhajia (you know them as 'bhaji's or pakora), and other fried fritters, samosa, even in a sandwich. If you'd like to try making your own, click here to read how. 


Bhaji



This is one that came to my attention recently at a Khao Nights supper club where we shared Pav Bhaji (pictured above), a popular Mumbai street food one of the guests asked about the Bhaji portion of the dish. The definition of a bhaji in the Oxford dictionary is "a small flat cake or ball of vegetables, fried in batter". When you go to an Indian restaurant, you're probably very likely to see onion bhaji on the menu. However, in Gujarati, a bhaji is used to describe a curry-like dish. It is usually made of vegetables and a thick tomato-onion gravy. In a dish like pav bhaji, the bhaji is the main curry created with mashed potatoes, cauliflower, peas, and carrots and enjoyed with bread rolls or pav. The curry is moreish and delicious, created used many different spices and ingredients, cooked in loads of butter to create a flavourful dish, that is sometimes even better the next day!



Bhaji also constitutes a word we use at home to also talk about a shaak made with spinach, fenugreek or dill leaves that is made with simply garlic, chilli powder, and turmeric, as seen in the image above. We'd call it 'palak bhaji' (spinach) or "methi bhaji" (fenugreek) and is eaten with rotli. This can be dry, or you can add water to make it runny. The most similar counterpart to a Gujarati green-leaf bhaji is a saag, where no tomato gravy or sauce is required. Similarly to a saag aloo, you can add potatoes to the bhaji, but also a number of other vegetables like aubergine, bitter gourd, peas, green beans and more. The versatility of this dish is it can be adjusted per season and the availability of the core green leaf ingredient.



Athanu

pronounced "a-thha-noo"


Athanu is the Gujarati word for a fruit or vegetable pickle, called Achar in Hindi. The most popular kind is made with raw, green mangoes but there is such a vast variety of pickles that can range from carrots and chillies to a fruit called manjack or gunda. Some of my earlier memories of homemade pickles are seeing raw green mango pieces being left to dry under the radiator after soaking for multiple days in a turmeric and water brine. These are then added to an oil-based pickle with various whole and powdered spices, creating the ultimate sour mango pickle or "khati keri nu athanu". The sour mangoes gradually soak up the flavours of the spices, creating an intense burst of flavour with each bite. Another popular method of making an athanu is with the use of something sweet as a preserve, almost like a savoury/spicy jam or marmalade. Combining a fruit or vegetable with sugar or jaggery and a variation of spices and chilli powder creates a delicious and rich umami flavour, perfect to enjoy with any meal...but a real treat to just grab a little on a spoon! 


Green mango, after a salt & turmeric brine
Green mango, after a salt & turmeric brine

This reminds me of my favourite athanu; a couple of years back, Dad and Grandma took a short trip to visit our family in Kenya. One of the family members they visited was my dad's cousin, an aunt known for her incredible cooking skills, who never tired of rustling up something or another any time of the day. When Dad and Grandma came back, they brought back with them a couple of glass jars full of homemade athanu, including a jar of "Gor keri" or sour mango pickle with jaggery. This was and still is up to this day, the most delicious athanu I have ever eaten. The jaggery had been cooked with lashings of red chilli powder and other spices, and transformed into a rich dark sauce that coated each piece of insanely sour mango, making it so good that I would literally eat it alone in a small dish! I'd often be told off if caught doing this! Sadly, my aunt who made it is no longer with us, and the flavour and taste remain a fond and bittersweet memory. 



Papad

pronounced "pa-par"


You've probably gone into your local or favourite Indian or South Asian restaurant and been presented with a plate full of crispy papads or poppadoms. Perfect as a snack on their own, with dips or even topped with chopped onions and tomatoes, they are even better when enjoyed with a meal. `The word "poppadom", as it is called in English, comes from the Tamil word pappaṭam. In Gujarati, we call them papad.


Papads can be made from any type of flour ranging from lentils like chickpeas, gram or black urad but also rice flour or even tapioca flour and are seasoned with cumin, black pepper, or crushed green chillies. The type of papad also depends on the region of India and their regional cooking styles.


Growing up, during the warm, bright and sunny days, Mum, Grandma and my Aunties would make vast quantities of papad at home, using the sunshine to dry them out as a way of preserving them to be used for months afterwards, ready to cook and enjoy.


There's actually a highly popular business story linked to the mass production and selling of papad, where seven Gujarati women started a company called Lijjat. Established as a way to empower women predominately in Mumbai, this Indian women's worker cooperative later spread throughout the Indian subcontinent. Whilst the brand now sells many other products along with papads, this crispy, delicious disc-shaped snack paved the way for hundreds of thousands women to be financially independent and continues to promote a woman-run and owned worker cooperative.






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