When flavours invade your plate

Bengaluru is a foodies’ delight and the city offers you food from every corner of the world. Having barely heard about Sindhi restaurants, we were quite excited when we heard about Sindh Kitchen, in Malleshwaram. The place, started by Vandana Luthria and her son Akshay, offers North West Frontier cuisine with authentic Sindhi, Pakistani and Afghani dishes.

The cosy place is divided into two dining areas — a regular open dining space that can seat 50 people and a dining room where a large family of 10 can eat in privacy. We chose the latter and were thrilled to have the space to ourselves.

As we look at the menu, Akshay explains that every dish is his mother’s recipe, which is “normally cooked at home”.

We begin with traditional starters such as the dal pakhwan (deep fried crispies which is topped with channa dal paste, raw onions and is eaten with an assortment of chutneys), achari paneer tikka, Lahori paneer tikka, sunheri soya chaap, jalpari kabab (fish and prawn sheekh ) and the famous aloo tuk (boiled potatoes that are deep fried and topped with tangy spices).

One should not think of calories when binging on these.

“These are authentic Sindhi dishes we have been eating since childhood. These recipes are ubiquitous in almost every Sindhi household and most of the recipes are handed down generations. I learnt to cook from my mother and she, from hers. Most dishes you see on the menu are a constant in our homes as idlis and dosas are in a South Indian household,” explains Vandana.

Next we dig into the kadhi chawal with meetha boondi. “The kadhi rice is incomplete without the tuk. It is only now that people are conscious about calorie intake and have cut down on it. Else, the tuk is eaten almost every day,” beams Vandana.

The kadhi is very unlike the Gujarati or the Punjabi versions where only besan and yogurt are used. This version is loaded with vegetables such as beans and drumsticks and is a tangy treat.

Ask Vandana about the one signature ingredient in a Sindhi kitchen and she replies, “We use lots of onions and cardamom. The latter is used especially in mutton gravies.”

The menu is also a non vegetarian’s delight with dishes from parts of Kashmir and Pakistan. There are lovely chaats which make you grin with every bite along with Photey gosht (lamb), Sindhi chicken curry, which are downed with bhuga chawal and varied versions of Sindhi rotis. As we burst at our seams, we try and stuff ourselves with dessert. This time it is pragree with rabdi, which calls for pin drop silence while we swipe it clean from the plate.