Traditional recipes

Steamed flattened rice with onion, fennel and a tangy spice mix called jeeravan, topped with sev. Indore’s everyday breakfast, often eaten with hot jalebi.

Wheat dough balls boiled, then baked and soaked in ghee, served with spiced dal. The feast dish of Malwa.

Grated sweet corn cooked in milk with green chillies and mustard seeds, a savoury snack from Indore.

Cubes of purple yam fried crisp and tossed with a tangy spice mix and lemon, a winter street snack of Indore.

Potato patties stuffed with sweet-spicy coconut, dry fruits and green chilli, fried crisp. An Indore speciality.

Soft urad dal vadas in thick, lightly sweet curd, topped with spice powders and sometimes tossed high in the air as they are served.

Not the lemonade of North India but a thick, sweet milk drink with saffron, cardamom and nuts, sold in Indore’s markets.

Crisp gram flour noodles spiced with cloves, black pepper and ajwain. A GI-tagged snack from Ratlam.

Fried khoya dumplings stuffed with dry fruits and soaked in sugar syrup, a rich sweet of Malwa.

Dark, thick jalebis made from khoya, fried in ghee and dipped in syrup. A sweet Jabalpur is known for.

Thin, brittle sheets of sesame and jaggery, beaten until flaky. The winter sweet of Morena in the Chambal region.

Crisp puris stuffed with spiced urad dal, eaten with a thin, tangy potato curry. A breakfast of Gwalior and the Chambal region.

Steamed wheat-gluten pieces cooked in a spiced curd gravy, a traditional Malwa dish for days when fresh vegetables were scarce.

Thick maize-flour breads baked between leaves over a slow fire, a rustic dish of the Malwa and Nimar countryside.

A spicy curry of the black-fleshed Kadaknath chicken, a GI-tagged native breed of Jhabua.

Mutton slow-cooked with browned onions, curd and whole spices, a festive dish of old Bhopal’s kitchens.

Spiced minced meat moulded on skewers and grilled over charcoal, sold in the evening lanes of old Bhopal.

Goat trotters simmered overnight into a rich, spiced broth, eaten hot on winter mornings in old Bhopal.

Rice cooked in a fragrant mutton stock (yakhni) with whole spices, lighter than a biryani and served at Bhopal’s feasts.

Minced mutton cooked dry with onions, tomatoes and green chillies, a popular breakfast and dinner dish in old Bhopal.

Fine vermicelli cooked in milk with dates, nuts and cardamom, served to every guest on Eid ul-Fitr in Bhopal.

A sweet porridge of little millet (kutki) cooked in milk with jaggery, from the Gond and Baiga areas of Mandla and Dindori.

Kodo millet cooked like rice and eaten with a simple dal, a daily meal in the tribal hill villages of Dindori and Mandla.

A milk fudge rich with chironji, the small nut-like seeds collected from forest trees in Madhya Pradesh.

Flaky fried pastries filled with spiced moong dal, a morning favourite in Indore served with chutneys.

Thick wheat breads roasted in the embers of a fire and eaten with smoky mashed brinjal, a rustic winter meal of Malwa and Nimar.

Hand-patted sorghum flatbreads, a staple of the Nimar region along the Narmada, eaten with dal, kadhi and chutneys.

Sun-dried moong dal dumplings cooked in a spicy tomato gravy, a pantry dish of Bundelkhand homes.

Colocasia leaves spread with spiced gram flour paste, rolled, steamed and sliced, then fried or cooked in gravy. A monsoon dish of Baghelkhand.

Fried rice-flour and jaggery cakes coated in sesame, made for weddings in Baghelkhand.

Gram flour roasted slowly in ghee and shaped with sugar into round sweets, the kind of laddoo sold as prasad at the Mahakaleshwar temple in Ujjain.

Hot milk simmered with saffron, cardamom and nuts, poured from a height to froth it, at Indore’s Sarafa night market.

Soft, round fritters of wheat flour and jaggery, made as an offering and a festive snack in Bundelkhand and across central India.