Food: A Saddle of Identity

Darshni Parekh   
SYBA 2019

                        

Undhiyu

How to make Undhiyu:

Ingredients:

·       1 kg cultural exchange

·       1/4 tbsps. comfort, familiarity, acculturation, identity, and ethnocentrism

·       ½ litre othering

·       1 kg commercialization and transport sophistication 

·       2 ½ tbsps. of authenticity and seeds of power

·       2 cups of economic status and occasion masala

·       10 tablespoon gender dynamics

 

Step 1. Take an earthen pot, heat it well. Oh wait! You can use the modern non-stick kadhai (thank the colonizers). Who will work so hard?

Step 2.  Take a bowl full of cultural exchange and add pinches of comfort, familiarity, acculturation and a pinch of ethnocentrism in it (add more than a pinch) and blend it well. Add a little identity in it and form smooth dough. When done, divide this dough into portions. Be careful that each portion should have its own representation. So, divide it equally!

Step 3. Now take a new non-stick kadhai add a half a litre of Othering. Fry the dough in it and once it’s fried, transfer them on an absorbent paper.

(Undhiyu is not just famous among the Gujarati. Even the Bohri community which is still found in Gujarat when exposed to that dish through acculturation borrowed this dish and just modified it by adding meat in it. Their dish is called as Umadhiyu. There is a cultural exchange seen here where two different communities, the Parsi and Gujarati are connected by a common dish. Also, Undhiyu becomes a key through which these two cultures share a part of their identities. Undhiyu is also seen as a dish of comfort and familiarity among Gujarati. Often during our weddings, it becomes an obligation to keep Undhiyu in the menu as this is the dish which gives a sense of comfort and homely feeling when we see this dish. It also gives us the right to discuss the various modifications in the recipe and comment on the taste associated with it. This relativity helps to understand the people who we are familiar with and who we aren’t. Also, we Gujarati have different types of regional undhiyus like the Surati Undhiyu, Kathiawadi Undhiyu, Valsadi Undhiyu etc. As a result, there is an othering which happens among different sub groups within the same community. Generally, when we make Undhiyu, it’s the Surati Undhiyu which other groups associate Guajarati with. No one knows the Kathaiwadi Undhiyu. We can see the dynamics of core and periphery being created where Surati Undhiyu is the core and Kathiawadi Undhiyu being the periphery as maximum Guajarati associate themselves with the core. Ethnocentrism is also common among these groups as all of them feel that their way of cooking this dish is superior than the others. For me, belonging to two different groups from the Gujarati community, I am often in a state of double consciousness regarding with which group’s dish I should identify with.)

Step 4. Now we cut commercialization, sophistication of transport into small pieces and add 2 ½ tbsps tadka of authenticity to it. Be careful while doing this. Mix well all the ingredients. Otherwise I fear you won’t live up to your identity.

(We often to go certain restaurants like Maharaja Bhog etc to eat authentic Rajasthani food. We have followed the ideas of the colonizers that regional food has to be authentic. The amount of typical taste one gets classifies whether the food is authentic or not. Authenticity is determined in terms of from where one brings the materials required to make a specific dish. Often our family orders the vegetables required to make Undhiyu from Gujarat as then only you can get the typical Undhiyu taste. In a way we are legitimizing our identity by fulfilling all the expectations required to live up to our true identity and cooking authentic food is one of the ways of doing that. Due to flexible transport system it’s become easier to order the materials from any place which has resulted in creating commercialised restaurants which claim to serve authentic food. The idea of authenticity in food is a boost to the economy as it helps in continuous production and trade due to our increasing consumer culture. I feel the idea of authenticity is problematic when the individual is not able to meet the expectations of a dish. Does that mean that the individual isn’t identified as a member of his/her community anymore? If that’s the case then all the Indians living abroad will have a problem as they don’t get access to the original spices and flavours required to make their respective regional dish.)

Step 5. After this mixture add freshly accessible economic status and blend in different colours of certain occasions. Now we will perform the ritualistic ceremony of marinating the mixture.

(In terms of accessibility, Undhiyu is majorly accessible during the winter season if one wants an authentic taste from it. Similarly, the dish is cooked only during festive occasions like Makar Sankranti. It’s like performing a ritual of cooking that dish on a particular occasion. We Guajarati have certain dish associated with certain occasions like we need Sabodana which is commonly known as faraar during fasting. Therefore, the community has certain food dishes to celebrate joy but there are no dishes to comfort sadness. The culture promotes ideas of social solidarity by creating certain dish for a festive occasion but doesn’t have any food dishes to bind people on sad occasions or to resolve conflicts. Also, these authentic dishes if cooked more than once tend to implicitly show the economic status of the family as a lot of materials are required to make them.)

Step 6. Finally, put the pressure cooker on medium flame and drizzle seeds of power in it and sauté on medium flame until they crackle. Now add stuffed dynamics of hierarchy and increase the flame to high. Blend it thoroughly. Cover the cooker with a lid and cook all the materials for 2 whistles. After 2 minutes, switch off the burner and let the steam of oligarchy release on its own.

(My mother used to tell me that Undhiyu was earlier considered to be a food of the peasants, a lower class but today the elites have used their power to add this dish to their list of dishes and taking credit for its origin by making all the materials required to make this dish more accessible to them than the poor. In a way the elites had the power of taking away the dish from the peasants which was a part of their identity of which they were proud of.

Step 7. Open the lid and toss all the contents in the cooker and finally mix gender dynamics in it. Put the cooker once again on low flame and cook all the materials for 5 minutes.

(Food has certain gender dynamics associated to it. Today in spite of women working, they are expected to play the role of a typical housewife who needs to cook lavish food representing their community which is tagged as authentic in order to gratify her relatives as well as sometimes to please her husband’s boss and colleagues for her husband’s promotion. My grandmother once told me of how she used to make Undhiyu in order to convince my grandpa for certain things. This signifies how women use food as a medium of communication and manipulation to convey their sentiments to their husband and to convince them. Women also have a pressure to take care of the family and maintain their health. Like my mother often when she cooks Undhiyu adds less oil in it to reduce our calorie intake. Today we all have become health conscious and want to maintain our physique so there is a modification of various junk food items seen where different versions of the same dish is created in order to make it healthy. Somewhere food is associated with a woman’s matchmaking identity. In this phenomenon a woman’s culinary skills are identified and defined in terms of the food dishes she knows how to make. For. eg, in my family if a woman knows how to make difficult dishes like Undhiyu, Locha, Handva etc she is considered have great culinary and domestic skills. Certain types of food dishes are used to categorise and generalise the domestic roles of a woman. When women tend to share their food dish recipes with each other it gives them a liminal space to vent out their queries and the various struggles they face. In a way this space helps them to identify with each other. Is Undhiyu a short-term meal? Well, no it’s not a short-term meal cause its prepared in bulk therefore it is a leftover food but it can be eaten the next day thus making the woman’s job a little easier in terms of not cooking any meals).

Step 8. Your dish is ready to be served! Just garnish it with a variety of emotions before serving it.

Beware while cooking this dish you might start identifying yourself with our community. It’s very addictive in nature.

REFERENCES:

Amit, D. (2019,December 16). Veg https://www.vegrecipesofindia.com/undhiyu-recipe-gujarati-undhiyu-recipe/

 https://www.dnaindia.com/lifestyle/report-celebrating-undhiyu-2574667

Tarladalal. (n.d.). Gujarati Undhiyu Recipe. https://www.tarladalal.com/Oondhiya-Undhiyu-Gujarati-Undhiyu-Recipe-602r

IMAGE REFERENCES:

SURTI UNDHIYU (GUJARATI UNDHIYU). (2020). Retrieved 29 July 2020, from https://www.jcookingodyssey.com/2010/01/undhiyu-recipe-gujarati-undhiyu.html?m=1