Jaipur: Pink City Cooking Class - Indian Traditional Food

Rajasthani food, learned properly, in three hours.

Rajasthani cooking is not the Indian food most visitors expect, and the reason is the desert. Water was scarce, so dishes were cooked in ghee and buttermilk instead. Fresh vegetables were scarce, so lentils, gram flour and dried beans carried the plate. Food had to keep for days without refrigeration, which is why so much of it is dry-spiced rather than saucy.

Once you know that, the whole cuisine makes sense — and that is what a good class here teaches alongside the recipes.

What you are likely to cook

Dal baati churma, the state dish: hard wheat rolls baked until they crack, broken into ghee, with a spiced dal and a sweet crumbled churma alongside.

Gatte ki sabzi, gram-flour dumplings simmered in a yoghurt curry, invented precisely because there were no vegetables to put in it.

Plus a bread worked on the tawa, rice, and whatever is in season.

The spice box gets explained early — what cumin does that coriander does not, why garam masala goes in last and turmeric first. Most guests say that part changed how they cook at home more than any recipe did.

Then you eat what you made.

Included

The cooking class and the meal.

Worth knowing

Who it suits

Anyone who cooks at home, travellers who want a break from monuments, and visitors curious why Rajasthani food tastes nothing like the Indian food they know.