Cooking Gujarati food abroadવિદેશમાં ગુજરાતી રસોઈના સવાલ

The atta I buy here makes tough rotli. Why does the flour behave differently?

Indian chakki atta is stone-ground from hard Indian wheat with the bran milled straight back in, so it drinks far more water and gives a soft, stretchy dough. Western whole wheat flour is roller-milled from a different wheat and its bran is coarser and sharper, so it cuts the dough instead of softening it. Closest is chakki-ground atta from an Indian grocer; failing that, a finely milled whole wheat flour rather than a coarse wholemeal. An exact match for your mother's flour is not really available here. Whatever you buy, the water goes up and the resting goes longer. Start at about three quarters of a cup of water to 1 cup of flour, then add by feel and not by the cup, because flours differ by brand and by season. Correctly hydrated kanak is slightly tacky, takes a fingerprint and rises back slowly. Knead 8 to 10 minutes, rest 20 to 30 minutes covered. The common mistake is adding all-purpose flour to soften it, which gives rotli that go leathery as they cool, and kneading too little.

I have an oven and no tava. What can I actually make in it, and what not?

For rotli an oven is a poor substitute for a tava, and for plenty of other things it is a good one. A tava cooks by direct contact with hot metal, and that sudden contact heat turns the water inside the dough to steam fast enough to puff it. An oven surrounds the rotli with hot air, which dries the surface before the inside ever steams, so you get a cracker. What it does do well: handvo, muthiya and baked puri-type things at 180 C, which is 350 F, for 30 to 40 minutes; khakhra crisped, thepla reheated in foil, a soggy farsan dried out again at 150 C, or 300 F, for 8 to 10 minutes; papad under the grill for seconds a side, watched. For rotli, a heavy flat-bottomed frying pan or a cast-iron skillet on the hob beats the oven by a mile and costs little. The common mistake is baking rotli, getting a biscuit, and deciding the atta is wrong when it is the heat source.

My dal and kathol never soften here. Is it the water?

Often yes, hard water genuinely slows pulses down, and it is the commonest reason dal that softened in 20 minutes at home sits there for an hour here. The calcium and magnesium in hard water bind with the pectin in the seed coat and the skins and hold them firm, so water takes much longer to get in. If your tap water is hard, cook and soak in filtered or bottled water, 8 hours or overnight for kathol. Keep salt out until the pulse is already soft, and acid too: tomato, lemon, kokum and amchur go in at the end, because acid slows the softening further. How much time it adds depends on how hard the local water is and how old the dal is. Old dal is the other common cause and is often blamed on water: if a known-fresh packet softens normally in the same water, it was the dal. A pinch of baking soda does soften pulses, but it changes the taste and turns them slimy if overdone, so a pinch is the limit.

What works instead of Indian curd, milk and ghee abroad?

All three are available, but each behaves differently, and the differences are about fat, water and how the milk was treated. Ordinary pasteurised whole milk sets the best curd; UHT and ultra-pasteurised milk often set loose and watery, from how they were heated. Boil it, cool to blood warm, around 40 C or 105 F, stir in 1 to 2 teaspoons of old curd as atho per cup of milk, and hold the warmth in an oven with only the light on, or a bowl of warm water. Reckon 4 to 6 hours in a warm house, 8 to 10 in a cold one. A thin set gives thin chaas, so thin a firm curd with cold water, not milk. Ghee comes out well from unsalted butter, cultured closer in flavour than sweet-cream, never salted; 500 g gives roughly 350 to 425 ml, which varies. The same milk makes decent paneer, UHT a poor crumbly one, and double or heavy cream stands in for malai. The common mistake is using semi-skimmed or UHT milk and blaming the atho.

What is worth bringing in a suitcase from India, and what is not worth the weight?

Bring what you cannot buy abroad or what is markedly worse there, and leave anything heavy your Indian grocer stocks adequately. Worth the weight: good hing, a masala dabbo, a velan and patli, a khandani, methi and other seeds if you want a particular quality, the regional things your family makes that no shop stocks, and steel thali and a vatki to calibrate your cups against. Skip atta, rice, dal, oil, gor, sugar and salt: heavy, and stocked everywhere. A tava and a pressure cooker are heavy and buyable there, a judgement call rather than an obvious yes.

Check your destination's own customs or biosecurity rules before packing, and declare what you carry: many countries restrict seeds, plant material, fresh produce, dairy and meat, the rules differ and change, and getting it wrong means confiscation or a fine. Double-bag oil and anything wet, which leaks at altitude; keep ground masala in a tin, not a bag; damp things go mouldy in a hold. The common mistake is half a suitcase of atta and dal, the cheapest, heaviest thing in it.

My children will not eat Gujarati food. How do I cook so they will?

Children who did not grow up on this food mostly object to three things, chilli heat, unfamiliar texture, and food that is all mixed together, and each one has a different fix. Take the chilli out of the pot and put it on the table: cook the dal and the shaak mild, and let the adults add lila marcha, chutney or masalo to their own plate. Keep the components separate on the plate rather than mixed, because a child who can see what each thing is will try it. Start them on what is already near their comfort zone, thepla, khakhra, plain dal and rice with ghee, bataka nu shaak, muthiya, dhokla, rather than on a bitter or sour shaak. Small repeated exposure with no pressure is what works over months; a food refused once is not refused forever, and making it a fight reliably backfires. Let them roll rotli or press muthiya, because children eat what they made. This is about the cooking and the taste only; anything beyond that is a question for a doctor.

I am cooking a Gujarati meal for guests who have never eaten it. What should I serve?

Serve fewer dishes than a Gujarati thali has, keep the heat mild and the sweetness moderate, and name each thing as you put it down. A full thali is 8 or 10 items in a known order, and a guest who does not know that order finds it bewildering rather than generous. What surprises a first-time eater most is chilli heat and sweetness in a savoury dish, the gor in dal and shaak. About 5 or 6 items works: a mild dal, one dry shaak, rotli or puri, rice, a kachumber and one farsan such as dhokla or khaman, with athanu, chutney and masalo on the table, not the plate. Say that the sweet-and-sour dal is meant to taste like that, or they assume a mistake. Ask about allergies and what they do not eat before you cook, peanuts and sesame, which turn up where a guest never expects them, and mention hing to anyone avoiding wheat, since most hing is cut with wheat flour. The common mistake is cooking twice as much as needed and serving everything at once.

Everything cooks differently on my electric or induction hob than it did on gas. What do I change?

What changes is the timing of your hands, not the recipe: the heat arrives differently. A gas flame wraps up the sides of a kadhai and responds the instant you turn it. An electric coil or glass top heats only the base and keeps giving heat after you turn it down, so a vaghar burns after the knob has moved. Induction is fast and responsive but still heats only the flat base, and it needs a magnetic pan: steel and cast iron work, an aluminium or round-bottomed steel kadhai does not, so keep a flat-bottomed pan. On electric or glass, pre-heat before the vaghar, hold the rai and jeeru ready because the pan does not cool when you want it to, lift it off the ring rather than turning the knob down, and keep a second ring already set low. Roasting a papad or charring a ringan over a flame is impossible on these; your oven grill or broiler is the nearest substitute. The mistake is one high setting throughout, scorching the vaghar and the bottom of the dal.

How do I find a decent Indian grocer, and what should I check when I get there?

Look for the fastest turnover, not the biggest range: almost everything that goes wrong with ingredients abroad is an age problem rather than a sourcing problem. Masala fades on a shelf, atta and besan carry oil and go rancid, and dal hardens as it sits, so a shop selling a sack a week beats one with forty kinds standing a year. Check the date on the packet and how close it is. The atta and besan should feel cool and smell sweet, not musty. A genuinely cold fridge and freezer tell you they handle fresh methi, curry leaves and paneer well. Whole spices, not only ground: whole keeps far longer and you can grind it yourself. Frozen matters too: frozen methi, tuvar lilva, surti papdi and grated coconut beat tired fresh ones. Ask when the delivery comes and shop that day, and buy flour in the smallest bag you will finish in a month or two. The mistake is buying the biggest sack to save per kilo, then cooking out of a rancid one for six months.

What genuinely cannot be reproduced outside India?

Some things cannot be reproduced abroad, and knowing which saves a lot of disappointment. Most are local varieties picked ripe in a short window: surti papdi, tuvar lilva, ponkh, deshi tomatoes, and the tender vegetables and fresh green garlic that make an undhiyu an undhiyu in one winter month. A fresh kesar or hafus is the same: even a good imported one was picked early and chilled for the journey, making it another fruit. Ponkh is the extreme case, a season of a few weeks that does not travel. The rest need a matlu, a chulo or a sagdi, where the smoke and slow earthenware heat are the dish — a rotlo or bharelu ringan on coals.

Also the water, which changes dal and chaas, and the shop frying ganthiya and jalebi at six in the evening. Where a fair substitute exists, take it: frozen lilva and papdi are good, a gas flame or broiler gets some char, home-made athanu beats imported. For ponkh and a fresh hafus there is no substitute; better to accept that than chase it.