Parsi cuisine

Primary meals

A typical Parsi lunch consists of rice eaten with lentils or a curry, where curry is made with coconut and ras without, and curry is usually thicker than ras. Dinner often includes a meat dish accompanied by potatoes or other vegetable curry, and kachumbar, a sharp onion-cucumber salad, accompanies most meals. Popular Parsi dishes include Chicken Farcha, Dhansak (lamb, mutton, goat, chicken or vegetables in a mixed lentil or toor daal gravy with brown rice), Patra ni Machhi (fish stuffed with green coconut chutney and steamed in banana leaf), Sali Murghi (spicy chicken with fried matchstick potatoes), Saas ni Machhi (yellow rice with pomfret in white sauce), Kolmi no Patio (shrimp in spicy tomato curry), Jardaloo Sali Boti (boneless mutton with apricots and fried potatoes), Khichri (rice with toor daal or moong daal), and Tamota ni Ras Chaval (mutton cutlets with rice and tomato sauce).

Also popular are Parsi egg dishes such as akuri (scrambled eggs with spices) and pora (Parsi omelette), and vegetables like okra, tomato, and potato are often cooked with eggs on top. Traditional breakfasts in Mumbai or South Gujarat villages during the 1930s included khurchan (offal meats with potatoes in spicy gravy) and some variant of fried or half-fried eggs, sometimes washed down with coconut toddy. Vegetables were once considered poor people's food, but there is now a trend toward light eating, no red meat, and vegetarianism.

Did You Know?

• Wedding feasts traditionally include Lagan nu Custard.
• Popular Parsi snacks include bhakhra, batasa, dar ni pori, doodh na puff, and khaman na ladva.