Gujarati Kadhi

Thin sweet-sour yoghurt and gram flour soup, tempered with mustard, curry leaf, and a stick of cinnamon

Origin: Ahmedabad & Gujarat, India

From the journey of Curry Leaf.

Kadhi exists across northern and western India and the Gujarati one is the outlier: thin enough to drink, distinctly sweet, and pale. The base is soured yoghurt whisked smooth with gram flour and let down with a great deal of water, simmered until the flour has cooked out, and finished with a tempering. Where the Punjabi version is thick, aggressively sour, and carries onion fritters, and where the Rajasthani is fierce with chilli, Gujarat adds jaggery and takes the whole thing in the direction of a sweet-sour broth that is drunk alongside khichdi rather than eaten as a curry. That sweetness is not an eccentricity but a regional grammar. Gujarati cooking puts sugar or jaggery into savoury dishes as a matter of course, balancing it against sourness and heat, and a visitor's first reaction is usually that something has gone wrong in the kitchen. It has not. The technical difficulty is the splitting. Yoghurt heated quickly curdles, and yoghurt with gram flour in it will still curdle if rushed. The mixture must be brought up slowly, stirred continuously in one direction, and not left; once the flour has cooked and stabilised the emulsion, at around ten minutes, it can be simmered safely. The curry leaf goes into a vaghar of ghee with mustard, cumin, cinnamon, clove, and dried chilli, poured over at the end so it sits on the surface. In Gujarat the tempering is often made twice: once into the pot and once over the bowl.

Ingredients

Base

  • 400 g sour plain yoghurt
  • 4 tbsp gram flour (besan)
  • 1 litre water
  • 1 tsp salt, or to taste
  • 3 tbsp jaggery, grated, or to taste
  • 1 piece fresh ginger, 3 cm, finely grated
  • 2 whole green chillies, slit

Vaghar

  • 3 tbsp ghee
  • 1 tsp black mustard seeds
  • 1 tsp cumin seeds
  • 0.5 tsp fenugreek seeds
  • 0.25 tsp asafoetida
  • 1 whole cinnamon stick, 5 cm
  • 3 whole cloves
  • 2 whole dried red chillies
  • 3 sprigs fresh curry leaves

To Finish

  • 3 tbsp fresh coriander, chopped

Method

  1. Whisk the yoghurt and gram flour together until completely smooth, with no lumps whatever, then whisk in the water a little at a time.
  2. Pour into a heavy pan, add the salt, ginger, and green chillies, and set over a medium-low heat.
  3. Bring it up slowly, stirring continuously in one direction, and do not walk away.
  4. Once it reaches a simmer and has thickened slightly, it is stable. Cook for a further 12 to 15 minutes so the gram flour loses its raw taste.
  5. Stir in the jaggery and taste. It should be clearly sweet as well as sour, which is the Gujarati signature.
  6. Heat the ghee in a small pan for the vaghar. Add the mustard seeds and wait for them to pop.
  7. Add the cumin, fenugreek, asafoetida, cinnamon, cloves, and dried chillies, then finally the curry leaves.
  8. Pour the tempering over the kadhi, stir once, and simmer for two more minutes.
  9. Scatter with coriander and serve hot with khichdi or plain rice.

Notes

The yoghurt must be sour. Fresh sweet yoghurt gives a flat kadhi; leave it out of the refrigerator overnight, or add a squeeze of lemon. Gujarati kadhi is deliberately thin, closer to a broth than a sauce. If yours is thick, it is a Punjabi kadhi and a perfectly good one, but a different dish. Do not let it boil hard at any point, even after it has stabilised. It reheats gently but will not survive a second hard boil. Serve with khichdi, the rice and lentil dish that is its inseparable partner, along with a spoonful of ghee, pickle, and pappadam.

The Gastrographer

The Gastrographer

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