Magaz or Char Magaz to be precise, is a mix of four types of seeds! These delicious seeds of melon family are immensely popular as superfood and are not only consumed raw or toasted but are also used in many sweet dishes as well as in curries! Char magaz i.e kernels of Watermelon, Cantaloupe, Pumpkin and Cucumber are used in many Sindhi dishes as well. The seeds are known for their brain boosting properties (Hence the name, Magaz or Brain!) and are a powerhouse of nutrition being rich in vitamins, minerals, proteins etc. The AlifBe #32 is غ i.e G̣…
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In Arabic Sindhi there are two consonants that sound similar but are actually different; ت and ط , i.e ‘T’ as in Taiwan, Tahini, Tabla etc. ت as in Tosha was covered in the AlifBe~ 6 , while the 30th consonant i.e ط is what we are discussing today. Unlike the ت that is used for words of Sindhi origin, ط is used for words of Urdu/Persian/Arabic origin. So what are we going to discuss today? Ta’am is what we will talk about. Meaning of the word Ta’am varies across the different languages. While in Jewish it means ‘taste’, in Turkish…
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Chap Chatni (Chap-p chutney)… the name itself evokes a wave of nostalgia; of the times when sneaking out of the school gates to buy eatables during the recess (lunch break) was common. The carts loaded with seasonal Indian berries (Remember Ber/ Hiramoti?), cucumber, raw mangoes, fresh tamarind, starfruit etc would be buzzing with the kids buying stuff in a hurry. Of course there were Vada paos, Samose, Barf gola (Chuski), lemonade etc that our moms never approved of but were still bought with our ‘barely existing pocket money’! You can read more about the childhood memories of food sold outside…
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Dothiyun (singular – Dothee) or Saatta, the popular Sindhi sweet, similar to Kutchi Saata or Gujarati Devada are highly addictive and a delight to relish. Basically a dothee (D^othee in Roman Sindhi) is a fried, sugar glazed cookie made from all purpose flour and ghee/vanaspati. Dothiyun are generally send in to married daughters and sisters on Vadhi Thadri . These are also a part of the ‘Phula Jalan’ or ‘Phula bhugra’ ritual after a child is born, when the mother is given Puffed rice, roasted chana, Mesu (Mysore Pak) and D^othiyun by the parents (maiden family of the new mother),…
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Technically the 17th letter of AlifBe or the Sindhi Alphabet is ح i.e ‘H’ but this particular alphabet is not used for words of Sindhi origin (there is another ‘H’in the AlifBe and it will be covered in future post when we will arrive on it) and hence there is no corresponding dish in Sindhi cuisine. So we will jump to next letter which, again, is used to write words of non Sindhi origin but thankfully we have a popular Sindhi dish starting with that letter. Any guesses?? Well, the 17th letter is خ which is ख़ in Devanagari (Kindly…
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In my last post, when I shared some of my memories about Aunt K, a Chhapru Sindhi in our old neighbourhood along with her recipe of Thumaro, I was not sure if I would share another recipe starting with the same alphabet ٿ or Th~ since I am picking only one recipe per Sindhi Alphabet. But I couldn’t resist this one as this is a seasonal dish and the green garlic, the star ingredient here, is just about to disappear from the markets. So a wise person will make hay while the sun shines and a foodie like me would make…
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Making Indian sweets at home could be tricky since most of these require perfect consistency of sugar syrup to obtain perfect texture of sweet dish. While some Indian sweets are little forgiving when it comes to syrup consistency (malpua, rasgulla, gulabjamun etc), the texture of batter/dough needs to be perfect for satisfactory results in such cases. For some sweets, the temperature is a deciding factor while some like laddoo need ‘tagar’, a most crucial ingredient to nail the texture and flavours, made by re crystallizing sugar syrup, by vigorously mixing it off flame, till it turns into a coarse powder.…









