This is my first blog post!
I’ve been blogging at The Botanical Kitchen for a few months now and while I’ve been out and about lots of people have asked me about my background which is Gujarati.
To be specific, my father is from Rajkot and from a ‘community’ of ‘Suthar’ which literally translated means ‘carpenter’. This is rather bizarre as I don’t know any carpenters in the family! I was born in Tanzania though, as was my mother, so a lot of the food you will find on this site also has influences from there.
Gujarati food is 100% vegetarian, despite having an extensive coastline for seafood, and this is mainly due to the influence of Hinduism. It varies widely in flavour and heat, depending on a given family’s tastes as well as the region of Gujarat they are from. The four major regions bring their own style to the food but meals often have sweet, salty, and spicy elements at the same time.
My family’s food is traditionally mild in the curry scale and uses little garlic or onions. This is partly because my Dad isn’t particularly partial to garlic or onions in food and partly because some of the family follow the Swaminarayan faith which forbids it. I love garlic and onions so I’ve adapted some of my family’s recipes to include them where I think they work well.
I hope you enjoy the recipes I’ll be posting on here and will have a go at making them.