Gujarati Cuisine

This cuisine originated from Gujarat, the western coastline state of India, often referred to as "Jewel of Western India". Gujarati cuisines are not only varied and lip smacking but also high in nutritional value. Different cooking styles and combination of spices are incorporated in preparing different dishes marking uniqueness of each.

The Four Pillars of Gujarati Food Culture

Kathiyawadi Cuisine

• Forming part of the region known as Saurashtra.
• Major cities such as Porbandar, Bhavnagar, Jamnagar, Rajkot and Junagad all comprise the Kathiyawad region. 
• Since it shares a border with the neighbouring state of Rajasthan, it is fair to say that Kathiyawadi cuisine is heavily influenced by Rajasthani cooking. 
• Highlights of Kathiyawadi cooking include the sev tameta nu shaak, which is a curry primarily made from tomatoes and chilli powder topped off with generous additions of sev, a noodle-like savoury snack made of gram flour (besan).

Surti Cuisine

• The city of Surat, which is located in the southern region of Gujarat, is recognised for its love of food, be it fine-dining or cheap street food. 
• The most popular dish to emerge out of Surat is undoubtedly the undhiyu. 
• It is named undhiyu (which loosely translates to upside down) because, traditionally, the salient ingredients such as papdi or Indian flat beans, tuver dana (pigeon peas), potatoes, eggplant, kand (purple yam), bananas and more are tossed together in an earthen pot with essential spices. 
• Undhiyu is a seasonal dish, made only in winter due to the availability of Indian flat beans and purple yam at that time of the year.

Amdavadi Cuisine

• The biggest city in Gujarat and former capital, Ahmedabad is definitely one of the state’s foodie hotspots. 
• Street food culture is rampant here, and you can find some delightful snacks and quick bites along with a plethora of mouth-watering sweets in every nook and cranny of this city. 
• The menu includes golas or snow cones dipped in a colourful and lip-smacking variety of syrups, especially popular in the summer. 
• Favourite is the jalebi – all-purpose flour deep-fried in a spiralling, almost pretzel-like style and dipped in sugar syrup. 
• In terms of savoury dishes, there is the dhokla, a light airy snack made of either rice or gram flour, which is steamed, then sprinkled with coriander leaves, coconut shavings and served with a mint-based chutney.

Kutchi Cuisine

• The dry, arid region of Kutch plays host to some individual dishes as well. 
• A lack of leafy green vegetables dictates the food choices in the region. 
• The dabeli is essentially street food where pao is stuffed with a filling made with potato, a paste made with tamarind, jaggery and date, and masala. 
• This bread is pan-roasted and then topped with sev, onion, spicy peanuts, and pomegranate seeds. 
• Traditionally dabeli bread is also swathed with a garlic-based chutney before roasting.

A Gujarati thali typically comprises of  one or two steamed or fried snacks called farsans, a green vegetable, a tuber or a gourd shaak (shaaks are main courses with vegetables and spices mixed together into a curry or a spicy dry dish), a kathol (braised pulses like beans, chickpea or dry peas), one or more yogurt dishes like dahi, kadhi (yogurt and pulses soup), raita or sweet shrikhand, rice or khichdi, daal usually toor dal, and sweets like halwas, basundi or shrikhand. Accompaniments include sweet, sour and spicy chutneys, pickles, ghee and a salad of chopped vegetables served raw or may be steamed in spices. The breads eaten with a thali would include thick and coarse bajra rotla, thin unleavened wheat rotlis, thick and crisp whole wheat flour rotis called bakhris, parathas, savoury griddle bread called the thepla, deep-fried puris, among others. There are many variations like methi thepla or masala puri.