For a potluck dinner the other evening, a friend had a brainwave. His Gujarati mother used to make the most delicious Surti undhiyu — a delicate, mixed vegetable dish of the region. Ever since she left for the big sky to cook for her friends and relatives up there, we have been undhiyu bereft. So the friend organised a consignment from a restaurant in Mumbai which was slated to arrive in Delhi just in time for dinner.

Sadly, the airline it was booked on offloaded it. And the undhiyu never reached us.

Undhiyu is to Gujaratis what hilsa is to Bengalis. Mention the word and a strange look comes to all Gujarati eyes. I asked my activist friend Teesta Setalvad what she thought of it, and she went quite lyrical, holding forth on all the vegetables that go into it. Traditionally, vegetables were chopped and put into a covered pot, which was placed under the ground upside down with embers on it. A host of vegetables — from purple yam and raw banana to green peas, green garlic, baby potatoes and baby brinjals — would be slow roasted in the pot.

“A typical undhiyu can have 20 to 22 types of vegetables,” says Aji Nair, chief operating officer, F&B Division, Mirah Hospitality, which runs the Gujarati and Rajasthani cuisine restaurant chain, Khandani Rajdhani.

But while it may be — as celebrity chef Sanjeev Kapoor calls it — the most popular Gujarati dish, it is not the only vegetarian
winter dish that the state can boast of. Gujarat has all kinds of special dishes that are hardly known outside the state.

Take the haldi nu shaak — a dry preparation of grated turmeric (nu shaak means vegetable dish) — or mogri peru, a dish of radish pods and guavas. “Haldi is good for winter, as it helps in warding off coughs and colds,” says Nair. “And mogri peru can be cooked or presented in a salad.”

I have always enjoyed Gujarati food, and like the way the winter dishes celebrate various kinds of winter vegetables. Chef
Pranay Singh of Swissotel Kolkata Neotia Vista, however, believes what makes Gujarati food special is the light use of masalas.

“One of the masalas often used is a nice mix of dhania and jeera pounded together,” says chef Singh, who went to Dahanu in Maharashtra to learn the nitty-gritty of Gujarati cuisine from the mother of one his Gujarati colleagues when he was working in Rajasthan long years ago.

His pet dish from the region is the ravaiya — a baby brinjal and potato dish. Among my favourites — apart from undhiyu, of course — is the light and mildly sweet kadhi.

Chef Kapoor’s published recipe for Gujarati kadhi is simple. Whisk together besan and yogurt till smooth. Add ginger-green chilli paste and two cups water. Add salt and mix well. Cut potato and radish into thin strips. Heat ghee in a deep non-stick pan. Add mustard seeds, asafoetida, cinnamon, cloves, cumin seeds, red chillies, curry leaves, potato and radish to the ghee and mix well. Cook for two to three minutes. Add water and cook till the potato and radish are cooked. Add the yogurt mixture and cook till the  mixture thickens slightly. Add sugar and mix well.

Chefs at Khandani Rajdhani make a variation of that — and that’s the lilva kadhi, prepared with a kind of green beans.
When I was growing up, I would have gagged at the idea of sugar being added to a savoury dish. But now that I am older and wiser, I know the role of sugar in food. To my mind, it’s also the use of sugar in a Gujarati vegetable dish that brings out its special taste.

Speaking of taste, it still rankles that we never got to eat our undhiyu. I just hope that the airport staff had a nice
undhiyu meal that day.

Photographs by Rashbehari Das;
Location courtesy: Khandani Rajdhani, Calcutta