Jaipur New: Street Food

Spiced onion and gram flour are sealed inside a layered pastry shell and deep fried until the outside flakes. Rawat Misthan Bhandar is widely credited with making this the Jaipur version of the snack. It is served hot, cracked open and topped with tamarind chutney. Most shops sell it from early morning, and stocks turn over quickly.

Asafoetida gives this kachori its name and its distinct savoury note, with a lentil and spice filling inside a fried shell. The spice is used in Rajasthani cooking partly because onion and garlic are avoided in many households. It is smaller and denser than the onion version. Eating it hot matters more here than with other kachoris.

Ground moong or urad dal is spiced and packed into a fried pastry case, then served with chutney. The filling is drier than the onion version and keeps longer, which is why it travels well as a packed snack. Shops in Chaura Rasta and Johari Bazaar make it in volume each morning. Portion sizes vary between shops.

A whole mild green chilli is deseeded, stuffed with spiced potato, dipped in gram flour batter and fried. Bread rolls are sometimes served alongside so it can be eaten as a sandwich. Heat varies with the chilli, so ask before ordering if you are sensitive. It is sold from mid-morning through the evening at most bazaar shops.

Dense frozen milk is set on sticks or in moulds, then served over faluda vermicelli with rose syrup and basil seeds. Unlike ice cream it is not churned, which gives it a firmer bite. Jaipur shops around Hawa Mahal serve it on double sticks to stop it slipping. Malai, kesar-pista and paan are the common flavours.

Batter is poured in a ring into hot ghee, where it sets as a honeycombed disc, then soaked in sugar syrup and topped with rabri or nuts. It is made mainly around Teej and Raksha Bandhan in the monsoon months. The open structure distinguishes it from other Indian sweets. Plain, malai and rabri versions are sold side by side.

The savoury kachori form is filled instead with sweetened khoya, nuts and cardamom, fried, then dipped in sugar syrup. It sits between a pastry and a sweet, and one is usually enough for two people. Shops make it fresh through the day rather than in advance. It is heavier than most Rajasthani sweets, so eat it warm.

Fine strands of wheat dough are fried and layered into a nest, then eaten dry with sugar or soaked in warm milk. It is made mainly in winter and around festivals, when the strands are pulled by hand. Texture is closer to a crisp than a cake. Both plain and ghee-rich versions are sold by weight in the bazaars.

A batter of flour, milk and sometimes mashed banana is fried into a small pancake, then steeped in sugar syrup and served with rabri. Versions of the sweet appear in early Indian texts, making it one of the oldest on this list. Rajasthani malpua is thicker than the Bengali form. It is served warm, most often after a thali.

Sesame seeds and jaggery are cooked down and beaten into thin brittle sheets, then cut into bars. It is winter food, made from late November and sold heavily around Makar Sankranti in January. Dry-roasting the sesame gives it the characteristic snap. Peanut and dry-fruit versions are sold alongside the plain one.

Rose is folded into a milk-solid sweet set into small discs, giving a floral note that sets it apart from standard mawa barfi. Rajasthan's rose-growing belt around Pushkar supplies much of the flavouring used in the state. It is sold by weight at the older sweet shops rather than in restaurants. Freshness matters, as it keeps only a few days.