The advent of winter season leads to interesting flurries in the food scene of Gujarat. In this blog, I am sharing with you the change in the Gujarati kitchens when the winter vegetables like Tuver & Papdi arrive. What kind of dishes are made… so you can plan to try some at your Gujarati friends place or at a Gujju restaurant 🙂

Gujarat’s Favourite Winter Greens: Tuver & Papdi 

One big addition in the food menus of winter is the arrival of green vegetables like tuver i.e. pigeon pea and papdi i.e. green flat beans.  

I have seen personally, how excited my mother is about finding really good quality tuver or paapdi in the market. If anyone is visiting Surat, their Gujju friends and family will give them requests to bring back bags full of these vegetables. The ladies of the house will then sit down together and peel the paapdi beans out …

When the quality of the paapdi is good and the covering is soft, both the covering and seeds are eaten. Sometimes if the paapdi covering is hard, then it is discarded with sad feelings but the seeds still make tasty vegetables. When you are purchasing look for the freshest and softest coverings…

Religious Food Restrictions are at Minimum During Winter

One of the reasons for this excitement is not only the arrival of these winter vegetables but also that for a lot of communities – their food restrictions are reduced in winter months. The Jains have stricter food restrictions all throughout 8 months of the year. They may not eat cabbage, leafy vegetables and more during other months. All this is allowed during the winter. Winter season has the most relaxed food related rules.  

This also applies to other communities, for example, one Hindu lady told us that they eat Methi only during the winters. Maybe because it is a warming food and so avoided outside of the cooler winter months.  

Winter is the time when the human digestive system is the strongest and so it is nice to see these months bring a stronger emphasis on various foods.  

Along with winter special vegetables like Tuver and Paapdi, we can also see better quality Methi, Tandalya and other green leafy stuff abundant in the market.  

It should be noted here that most of these vegetables are now available in the market outside of the winter months, thanks to frozen technologies and agricultural advancements. Thus, it is very much possible this food fiesta during the winters may reduce in coming years… glad I am documenting it now!  

Earlier, I wrote about the numerous sweets made with warming ingredients like methi, ginger, gundar (edible gum). (Read that blog after this one:  https://maproute.in/gujarati-winter-sweets-what-a-scrumptious-way-to-warm-up-indian-foods-series/)

Famous & Not-So-Famous Winter Vegetables: Undhiyu, Umbadiyu & More 

With these great-quality greens entering the market – tuver, paapdi and lot of bhaaji – Gujaratis look forward to specific vegetables made with them. Some of them are listed below,  

Undhiyu:

The most well-known and famous Gujarati winter dish is Undhiyu. It is a vegetable mix with many ingredients like potatos, tuver, paapdi and yam. Along with this there are small dumplings generally of methi leaves in gram flour. Every mouthful is filled with eclectic vegetables and tastes.  

Undhiyu from Surat i.e. Surati Undhiyu is famous. But there are also other types of Undhiyu like Kachchi Undhiyu which may be spicier or have other variations.  

I know of communities which have Undhiyu parties during this time, so for a lot of people this is one of the unmissable food dishes for winter!

Online sources suggest that the word Undhiyu has come from the word “Undhu” in Gujarati which means “opposite”. Which comes from the fact that the earthen pots used to cook this vegetable are placed upside down and heated from above. It all sounds quite strange to me… and would like to mention that I don’t think the typical Gujarati housewife is aware of this history. We basically call it Undhiyu – and then focus our attention on making delicious Undhiyu and eating it – and NOT discussing its Roots 😀 But so, I am glad some researchers are sparing time from eating Undhiyu and researching about it also 😀

Umbadiyu:

Very similar to Undhiyu but it is made in maatla (earthen pot) and possibly using other traditional cooking methods like wood fire etc…  

While the Undhiyu and Umbaadiyu are complex preparations including a lot of ingredients, there are simpler vegetables which we often in eat in the house made by our mothers.  

Tuver ne methi ni bhaaji na muthiya:

Simple watery gravy to cook the Tuver seeds along with dumplings. Methi leaves and gram flour dumplings are common. But other variations can also be tried. 

Paapdi ma muthiya:

Again a simple watery gravy with the paapdi seeds and the softer outer coverings are cooked. Even without dumplings this vegetable is quite tasty I feel. But methi leaves with gram flour dumplings can also be added in.  

It is an art to keep the dumplings soft enough. Too soft and they will break in the gravy. If they are too hard, won’t be so tasty. I prefer softer dumplings even if they crumble into the gravy.. rather than too harder ones. 

Lilva ni Kachori 

One other delicacy made from the soft, fresh-in-the-market paapdi is lilva ni kachori. It is like a tikki but shaped like a modak. It is quite delicious. Specifically, people eat these kachoris on Uttarayan day to celebrate the Makara Sankranti. I am not sure why this particular kachori is eaten on Makara Sankranti, but it sure adds more zest into the festive celebrations.

Talking about kachoris – there is another fried winter delicacy famous around Surat and Gujarat i.e. Ponk Wadas. Know more in this blog: https://maproute.in/ponk-stop-surat-indian-food/

Would you like to add any other winter vegetables of Gujarat? Let me know!