Thathai Bhatia Cuisine

rdf:langString Thathai Bhatia Cuisine

rdf:langString Thathai Bhatia cuisine is the cuisine of a subset of the Bhatia people of India, who embraced the Bhakti sect of Hinduism while living in the Thatta region, and became Pushtimarg – strict vegetarians who eschewed even onions and garlic and devoted themselves to Srinathji, the child form of Shri Krishna. Thatta was mostly a desert region, hot and humid. In pre-modern times, the cooking process was very slow, using mostly charcoal or wood. The Thathai Bhatias devised different ways to simplify the cooking process, such as gently cooking fresh vegetables and lentils with minimal spices to keep the flavour of the food intact. They omitted the use of pungent flavours, that of onion and garlic, which require cooking for a longer duration. They also avoided the use of these strongly flavoured ingredients because any food they prepared was first offered to the gods – an act which the Bhatias call Bhog Dharanu. Use of onion or garlic was considered to render the food tamasic ("impure"), hence these were not used. Bhog Dharanu is a ritual still followed in a lot of Bhatia households today, where the food prepared is first offered to the gods – as a token of love and gratitude for the daily meal. The belief is that gods bless the food. The food offered is then taken away while snapping the fingers twice to signal that it is being distributed to the family members as Prasad.