Memory Lane down Gujarati Food

Two posts about food in a day!! That means at least two things:
1. I have food on my mind.
2. I don’t have anything else to do. :)
Well, let me leave it at that. Now to get on with what inspired me to write this post. It was this blog http://thespicewholovedme.blogspot.com
This blog has some mouthwatering, mind-boggling.... gujju recipes. I am a great fan of gujju food. I was literally going mad looking at all those pictures and recipes. Although, I am not a Gujarati, I spend my entire childhood there and I was the one in our house to love any kind of Gujarati food. Well, rest of my family isn't too keen on food. That explains the size difference between me and them. ;)
Thinking of the Gujarati food does make me nostalgic. You might wonder what is so special about it or you might think its all sweet. But that is far from being true.
To taste real Gujarati food, you need to come to Gujarat. How can someone not like the food? I find that hard to imagine.
The khakaras are quite famous, so is dhokla. Dhokla does make me weak. These days in Bangalore we get dhoklas in food courts in the malls. I can’t pass by a stall featuring dhokla without eating it.
The dhebras...hmmmm....fried puri like but so much yummier than puris. And then there is chundo, the grated mango sweet, spicy all at once. I can eat it with anything or when I eat something I did not like, I refresh my taste buds by eating a spoonful of chundo.
Then there is handvo. You can eat it any time of the day. And the undhiyo...how can I forget that? I spent my childhood days waiting for undhiyo party to happen.
And the day it happened, I was one excited kid. We used to go to a farm and there they give 'matla undhiyo' (translated to pot undhiyo). They bake the beans, the sweet potatoes, potatoes etc in earthen pots with their mouths covered with dried grass or something. Then serve these baked veggies with spicy green chutney, also the sweet chutney, sev, oil
We had to take the beans out of their covering, mash the potatoes and them mix all chutneys and eat it. I will remember the taste all my life. Nothing can beat it. Then you have jalebi with it. It is the yellow, crisp jalebi, unlike the orange, softer version which I saw in Maharashtra. I love the yellow jalebi. Haven’t eaten it since I left Gujarat :(
The other version of undhiyo which is more cooked vegetable kind is also great.
Then there is this fulvadi with mattho. Fulvadi is fried vadi...not sure of details but extremely spicy and when you have it with curd based mattha, it tastes just perfect.
Oh yes, then there is ‘papdi no lot’ (translated to papdi dough). You wouldn’t have heard of people eating dough but once you taste this you will wonder how the dough can be left to be turned into papdi (similar to papad). The steamed dough is eaten with oil drizzled over it. I am pretty sure, women in Gujarat would hide some ‘papdi no lot’ from family
members otherwise they can never prepare papdi. The oil is poured to reduce the spiciness of the dough.
I can not get enough of Gujarati food. Though the real fact is that I have had it only a few times till now. I am not talking of the Gujarati thali. That I have every time I go there but the other things that make the Gujarati food so much more fun. We didn't prepare this at home so I had it only when friends and neighbors used to send them to us. I am thankful to all the people who introduced me to the delightful tastes of Gujarati food. I hope everyone gets to taste it. It will remain with you forever.