Pharyun in Sindhi could mean the pod of any legume or pulse grains but most of the Sindhis consider french beans as the Pharyun. Chauran (or Raanh) means Chawli or black eyed beans and the whole beans are called Chauran Jyun (of) Pharyun. Tender Long beans are not commonly had in many Sindhi homes though fresh pods from the matured beans are often cooked in Sindhi style gravy dish (Ras mein). Recently I found extremely fresh tender long beans and couldn’t resist buying a bunch of it. I cooked it the way Sindhis make Gvar/Guar patata. In the Thali: Chithyal…
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14 Vegetarian Sindhi Thali meals: When I started sharing some Sindhi Thali spreads on Instagram (Sindhirasoiofficial) and Facebook page (Sindhirasoi.com), I started receiving many requests to share the recipes of each dish presented in the Thali. So I thought to share the details of all the Thali meals in a blog post for easy reference! Most of these meals were cooked across the year, though some are from the distant past. I haven’t meticulously planned the menus of these Thalis and the dishes were cooked depending on the seasons and availability of the ingredients during the lockdown, in the past…
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Kadhi! A Kadhi, for Sindhis, generally means something that is soul soothing, heart warming, exhilarating…a dish that while being stirred in a pot, stirs up memories in your mind. It is not what the non Indians label as a ‘curry’. It is what your Mother/father/grandparents would cook, with all the love. It is something that you crave for, on a cold day, on days when you feel low, when you need a balm to soothe your aching heart. Kadhi is a Soul food, Kadhi chaawal, a comforting meal! Drop a yes, if you agree ! Many assume that a Sindhi…
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Matar Pao or the black vatana chaat is a classic street food dish from Ulhasnagar, my home town! It is made by cooking dried black peas (Kaala Matar/Vatana) with salt and water and the curry is generally flavoured with just pepper. A spicier version is made by adding garam masala powder by many vendors. The rustic flavours of the dish come from cooking vatana for longer duration, till soft and then by mashing some to make the gravy more thicker, homogenous and flavourful. Dried black peas take forever to cook and hence soaking these for 12 – 24 hours is…
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When I started working on my project about documenting ancient, traditional as well as lost recipes from Sindhi cuisine, a few years ago, the biggest challenge I faced was the lack of accessible information about the same. The limited documents that I could access, were in Sindhi, a script that I never could learn, despite of trying umpteen number of times, since my childhood. I felt stuck up. So the only way to move forward was to learn the Sindhi script and to make sure that I don’t give up this time, I took up a challenge; The AlifBe of…
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The last letter of AlifBe, the Sindhi ‘Alphabet’ is ي in Sindhi, य in Devanagari and ‘Y’ is Roman Sindhi. It is also used as a vowel and could be pronounced as /e/ (even long /eee/). No Sindhi dish starts with the letter Y. Hence for the last letter in this series I have picked ‘Viyam Ja khaada’ . Viyam /Vyam/Vi-am means Delivery (Child birth) and Khaada means food/dishes. So basically it means the food that is supposed to be consumed by new mothers, particularly for the first 40 days after child birth. Traditionally, the new mother is supposed to…
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The AlifBe of Sindhi food series is inching towards the end and I am trying to stay focused and enthusiastic about blogging beyond the AlifBe series. Wish me luck, dear friends! For the uninitiated, there are 52 letters in Sindhi script. Out of 52, I have skipped three letters, namely ح , ظ , ث i.e ‘S’, ‘Z’ and ‘H’ respectively as these are used in the words of Non Sindhi origin (i.e in words that are Arabic, Persian etc) while هہ , ز , س are used for the similar sounds (S, Z, H) in words of Sindhi origin.…





