Udaipur New: Local Foods

Three elements share one plate. Hard wheat dough balls are baked over embers, then cracked open and drowned in ghee. They are eaten with panchmel dal, a blend of five lentils. Crumbled wheat sweetened with jaggery finishes the meal. The baati travelled well on campaign, which is how the dish entered Mewar kitchens.

Mutton is simmered slowly in yogurt with garlic and dried Mathania red chillies. The chilli lends colour as much as heat. Royal hunting parties of Mewar and Marwar are credited with the recipe. Heavy spicing once masked the strong flavour of game meat. Restaurants today usually adjust the heat on request.

Seasoned gram flour is rolled into logs, steamed, then sliced into discs. The discs are simmered in a spiced yogurt gravy. The dish exists because fresh vegetables were scarce across arid Rajasthan. Gram flour kept indefinitely in the heat. It is served with rice or with bajra roti in most Udaipur thalis.

Two wild desert ingredients make this dish. Ker is the small sour berry of the Capparis decidua shrub. Sangri is the long bean of the khejri tree. Both are sun-dried, soaked overnight, then tempered with ghee, chilli and mango powder. The result keeps without refrigeration, which mattered in the Thar.

Meat is cooked slowly in milk rather than water. Cashew and almond paste thicken the gravy, which stays pale. Cardamom and cinnamon carry the aroma in place of chilli. The dish came out of Rajput palace kitchens and was reserved for guests. It sits at the opposite end of the scale from lal maas.