Traditional recipes

Sesame and jaggery sweets shared on Makar Sankranti with a promise to speak sweetly.

Soft flatbread stuffed with sweet chana-dal and jaggery filling, served with ghee.

Steamed rice-flour dumplings with coconut and jaggery, the favourite sweet of Shri Ganesha.

Flattened rice cooked with onion, turmeric, peanuts and curry leaves: the everyday breakfast of Maharashtra.

A fiery sprouted moth-bean curry topped with farsan, onion and lemon, eaten with soft pav.

A spiced potato fritter in a soft bun with garlic chutney: Mumbai's favourite street snack.

A buttery mash of vegetables cooked with pav bhaji masala on a hot griddle, served with toasted buttered pav.

Puffed rice tossed with sev, onion, potato and sweet and spicy chutneys, sold on Mumbai's beaches.

Soaked sago pearls stir-fried with peanuts, cumin and green chilli: the classic Maharashtrian fasting dish.

Crisp fritters of sago, potato and peanuts, eaten on fasting days and as a tea-time snack.

A savoury multigrain flatbread made from bhajani, a flour of roasted grains and pulses, patted out by hand.

Steamed and fried squares of fresh coriander and gram flour, crisp outside and soft inside.

Thin, lacy rice-flour pancakes from the Konkan coast, often eaten with sweet coconut milk or chutney.

A quick, comforting gram-flour curry tempered with garlic and green chilli, eaten with bhakri or rice.

A hand-patted flatbread of sorghum flour, the staple bread of rural Maharashtra.

A dry, crumbly dish of gram flour cooked with onion and spices, partner to bhakri.

Plain toor dal with a touch of turmeric and hing, poured over rice with ghee and lemon: the first course of a Maharashtrian feast.

Rice cooked with vegetables and goda masala, the dark, aromatic spice blend of Maharashtra. A wedding feast favourite.

A thin, spicy-sour dal made from the stock left after cooking chana dal for puran poli.

Small brinjals stuffed with a peanut, coconut and goda masala filling and cooked slowly in their own gravy.

Sprouted moth beans cooked with onion, coconut and goda masala: a protein-rich dry curry.

Large brinjals roasted over fire, mashed and cooked with green chilli, garlic and spring onion in the Khandesh style.

Soft, spongy fermented pancakes of rice and urad dal from the Malvan coast, eaten with chicken curry or chutney.

A fiery red mutton curry from Kolhapur, coloured and spiced with the local chilli masala.

A white, mildly spiced mutton broth with coconut milk and cashews, the cooling partner to tambda rassa.

Spicy Malvani chicken curry with coconut, served with vade: puffed, deep-fried breads of rice and pulse flour.

Surmai or pomfret simmered in a coconut gravy soured with kokum: the everyday fish curry of the Konkan coast.

Bombay duck fish, pressed flat, coated in spiced semolina and rice flour and fried crisp.

Prawns and rice cooked together with coconut, green masala and whole spices in the Konkan style.

A very hot, dark chicken curry from Nagpur, made with a roasted spice blend and a thin, oily gravy.

Mutton slow-cooked with lentils and vegetables, served with caramelised brown rice: the signature dish of Mumbai's Parsis.

Thick hung curd whipped with sugar, saffron and cardamom: the festive sweet of Gudi Padwa, eaten with puri.

Milk simmered for a long time until thick and creamy, sweetened and flavoured with cardamom, saffron and nuts.

Crisp half-moon pastries filled with coconut, jaggery or sugar, cardamom and nuts: a must in the Diwali faral platter.

A flaky flatbread stuffed with jaggery, roasted sesame and gram flour, made for Makar Sankranti.

Sweet rice cooked with fresh coconut, jaggery, cardamom and cloves for Narali Purnima.

A deep red, sweet-sour summer drink made from the kokum fruit of the Konkan coast.

A sweet-sour drink of cooked raw mango, jaggery or sugar, cardamom and saffron, drunk to beat the summer heat.

A coarse, fiery chutney of green chillies, garlic and peanuts pounded in a mortar, eaten with bhakri.

A dry chutney powder of roasted peanuts, garlic and red chilli that keeps for weeks.

Maharashtrian raw mango pickle with mustard, fenugreek, chilli and hing, made every summer for the whole year.

Crisp spirals made from bhajani, a roasted flour of rice and pulses: the star of the Diwali faral.

A cooling, lightly fermented finger-millet porridge drink of rural and Adivasi Konkan, thinned with buttermilk or water.