Traditional recipes

Fresh Bombay duck flattened, coated in spiced semolina and fried crisp outside and soft inside, a favourite of Daman’s fishing families.

Sun-dried Bombay duck roasted and pounded with onion, garlic and chilli into a dry, punchy chutney eaten with rice or bhakri.

A thin, tangy home-style fish curry with onion, tomato, red chilli and kokum or tamarind, eaten with rice in the fishing villages of Daman.

Prawns cooked in a thick, spicy onion-tomato masala with garlic and chilli, a popular seafood dish in Daman’s homes and eateries.

Mud crabs cooked in a rich, spicy masala of onion, roasted coconut and red chilli, made for special meals on the Daman coast.

Whole pomfret scored and coated with a red masala of chilli, garlic and lemon, then pan-fried, a seafood favourite of Diu.

Sun-dried fish or small dried prawns simmered with onion, tomato, garlic and chilli, a strong-flavoured curry of the Diu fishing households.

A thick, hand-patted flatbread of finger millet flour baked on a clay or iron griddle, a daily food of the tribal villages of Dadra and Nagar Haveli.

Soft rice-flour flatbread made with hot water and patted by hand, eaten with fish curry, vegetables or chutney in Dadra and Nagar Haveli and the Daman coast.

A thin, cooling porridge of finger millet flour cooked in water and mixed with buttermilk, drunk in the fields in summer.

Tender bamboo shoots gathered from the forest in the monsoon, boiled and stir-fried with onion, chilli and spices, a seasonal tribal dish.

Young leaves of takla, a wild plant that springs up with the first rains, cooked with onion, garlic and grated coconut.

A thin, warming curry of horse gram cooked with garlic, chilli and kokum, eaten with rice in the villages of Dadra and Nagar Haveli.