Dishes

Kutchi dabeliકચ્છી દાબેલીVegetarianSnack

Spiced mashed potato pressed into a buttered pav with tamarind-and-date chutney, garlic chutney, roasted peanuts, pomegranate seeds and sev. Invented in Mandvi in the 1960s by Keshavji Gabha Chudasama, and now so widespread in Maharashtra that most people who eat it have no idea it comes from here. Dabeli means "pressed".

Where to try: The original shop in Mandvi, still run by the family; carts everywhere in Bhuj.

Bajra no rotlo with white butterVegetarianMain

A thick hand-patted millet bread eaten hot with unsalted white butter, jaggery and raw onion or garlic chutney. This is the everyday meal of the region and the base against which everything else is an addition.

Kutchi kadhiVegetarianMain

Buttermilk and gram flour simmered with ginger, green chilli, curry leaf and a clear quantity of jaggery, thinner and distinctly sweeter than the Punjabi or Rajasthani versions. Eaten over rice or khichdi.

Khichdi and kadhiVegetarianMain

Rice and moong cooked soft with ghee, with the kadhi poured over. The standard evening meal in Kutchi households, and the standard convalescent food.

Bajra ni raabVegetarianEveryday

Millet flour cooked into a thin gruel with ghee, jaggery and ajwain, drunk hot in winter and given to women after childbirth. Grain, fat and sugar in the most digestible form available without a stove doing much work.

Lasan chutneyVegetarianAccompaniment

Raw garlic pounded with dried red chilli and salt, sometimes with a little oil. The sharpest thing on a Kutchi table and the reason the rest of the food does not need to be hot.

Khichiya and papadVegetarianAccompaniment

Rice-flour discs rolled thin and sun-dried in summer, then roasted or fried through the year. Dry-stores technology dressed up as a snack.

Sev tametaVegetarianMain

Tomatoes cooked into a thin sweet-sour gravy and topped with crisp gram-flour sev at the table. A dish for a kitchen with no fresh vegetables — both components keep for weeks.

Banni mutton and rotloNon-vegetarianMain

Goat or sheep cooked simply with onion, chilli and whole spice in the Maldhari and Jat households of the Banni, eaten with bajra rotlo. Meat is occasional and tied to guests and to festivals, not routine.

Coastal fish and prawnNon-vegetarianMain

Fried or in a thin masala at Mandvi and around the Jakhau fishing harbour, one of Gujarat's larger landing points. Inland Kutch does not eat it, and the two kitchens sit forty kilometres apart.

Dal pakwan and Sindhi kadhiVegetarianBreakfast and main

Chana dal with crisp fried flatbread, and the tamarind-and-vegetable Sindhi kadhi that is a different dish from the Kutchi one of the same name. Both are at home in the towns, and are the clearest everyday trace of the region's continuity with Sindh.

Adadiya pakVegetarianDessert

Urad flour cooked slowly in ghee with edible gum, dry ginger, pepper and dry fruit, set and cut into squares. A winter preparation eaten as a strengthening food rather than as a sweet course, in small pieces.

Gulab pak and mawa sweetsVegetarianDessert

Reduced milk worked with ghee, dry fruit and rose, set and cut. Everything in this family is built on mawa because mawa keeps, which is what a sweet has to do in a place with this climate and these distances.

SukhdiVegetarianDessert

Wheat flour roasted in ghee and bound with jaggery, pressed into a tray and cut. Three ingredients, keeps for weeks, travels without damage — the standard food to take on a journey, and the standard thing to send with someone leaving.

Khaarek — fresh and dried datesVegetarianFruit

Kutch is India's leading date-growing district, and the local habit is to eat the fruit at the doka stage — crisp and barely sweet — rather than waiting for it to soften. The Mundra and Mandvi groves crop in June and July.

Camel milkVegetarianBeverage

Drunk fresh or taken in tea by the Maldhari, and since the mid-2010s bought by dairies and sold pasteurised and as ice cream. It is naturally saltier and thinner than buffalo milk and does not set into curd, which is why it never developed a food culture of its own.