Parsi cuisine

Parsi Cuisine refers to the traditional cuisine of the Parsis of India.

Primary meals

The basic feature of a Parsi lunch is rice, eaten with lentils or a curry. Curry is made with coconut and ras without, with curry usually being thicker than ras. Dinner would be a meat dish, often accompanied by potatoes or other vegetable curry. Kachumbar (a sharp onion-cucumber salad) accompanies most meals.

Popular Parsi dishes include:

• Chicken farcha (fried chicken)
• Patra ni machhi (steamed fish wrapped in banana leaf)
• Dhansak (lamb, mutton, goat, chicken or vegetables in lentil or toor daal gravy)
• Sali murghi (spicy chicken with fine fried matchstick potatoes)
• Kolmi no patio (shrimp in spicy tomato curry)
• Khichri (rice with toor daal and/or moong daal)
• Saas ni machhi (yellow rice with pomfret fish fillets in white sauce)
• Jardaloo sali boti (boneless mutton in an onion and tomato sauce with apricots and fried matchstick potatoes)
• Tamota ni russ chaval (mutton cutlets with white rice and tomato sauce)

Also popular among Parsis, but less so elsewhere, are the typical Parsi eeda (egg) dishes, which include akuri (scrambled eggs with spices) and the pora ("Parsi" omelette). Also, vegetables like okra, tomato, potato and others are often cooked with eggs on top.

Traditional breakfasts during the 1930s in Mumbai or in many South Gujarat villages consisted of khurchan (offal meats cooked with potatoes in a spicy gravy), and some variant of the ubiquitous deep-fried, fried or half-fried eggs. In agrarian communities this would be washed down by copious quantities of coconut toddy, often straight off the tree.

Although in the not-so-distant past, vegetables were considered a 'poor peoples food', there is a presently a trend towards light eating, no red-meat and even vegetarianism.

Desserts

Common desserts include sev (vermicelli), ravo (semolina) and Malido. Also popular are faluda and kulfi, both of which are adoptions from the cuisines of the Irani and Urdu-speaking communities. Wedding feasts traditionally include lagan nu custard.

Snacks

Popular parsi snacks include bhakhra (deep fried sweet dough) batasa (flour and butter tea biscuits) dar ni pori (sweetened lentils stuffed in a light pastry) and khaman na ladva (dumplings stuffed with sweetened coconut).

References

Further reading

• Kapadia, Rita J. (2006), Parsi Cuisine: Manna of the 21st Century, USA: Createspace, ISBN 1499730284

• Westrip, Joyce P. (2006), Fire and spice: Parsi cookery, London: Serif, ISBN 1-897959-41-9