Uttaranchal… Home of so many holy places.
Kedarnath. Badrinath. Haridwar. Rishikesh. Rudraprayag.
Origin of the rivers Ganga and Yamuna. The holy place of Devaprayag where the rivers Alakanandi and Bhagirathi meets and flows forward as Ganga. (Prayags are places where two or more rivers meet)
And home for some great hill stations : Mussoorie, Nainital, Chamba…
The state is as beautiful as it’s dangerous. Land slides, floods all happen there.
Coming to food, other than the regular ‘North Indian food’ (dal-chawal-roti-sabzi), the state has some really different recipes which I wanted to try. There were many more recipes I wish I could have tried, but finally zeroed down on Phaanu (with toor dal), kaapa and thechwani.
Kaapa is not very different from how we prepare the spinach gravy. All it lacks is the tamarind which is a must in most Tamil based recipes (or South Indian, for that matter). Phaanu is toor dal soaked and ground with chillies and ginger-garlic. A portion of this ground mix is shaped as cutlets and deep fried and the rest is made into a pourable gravy.
Thechwani is also a gravy-ish curry that pairs well with rotis and rice.
Go through this link for Uttarakhand dishes. Though it’s a restaurant review, they talk about some of the state’s delicacies. Now, if only I could get that recipe for chancha (rice cooked in buttermilk!).
The Menu:
- Phaanu: Soaked and ground toor dal as a gravy base and a deep fried patty together in this recipe
- Kaapa: A gravy-ish spinach dish. I used the local variety available and mashed it a bit to get a homogeneous gravy.
- Thechwani : Radish and potatoes curry where the veggies are not cut using a knife, instead crushed/mashed.
- Rice
- Roti
- Tomato and Cucumber
My Kitchen Trials 
Enjoyed all the platters you managed to cook for all the states and loved running marathon with you.
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Drooling heer. Rajani here I am wondering what to make and you have platters and thalis everyday? Wow what an effort.
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another mouth watering platter from you
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That is one mouthwatering thali.. All three dishes look delicious
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Delicious preparation ! I always like your clicks , wonderful !
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lovely thali.. thali for every state is no mean task. you’ve done great rajani
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Appreciate your patience to cook so many thalis. Awesome platter.
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Drool worthy platter…nice clicks..
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I was just about to say Vaishali’s friend should be able to help you get the recipe and saw her comment saying the same :-)
Amazing thali as usual.
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Rajani, not sure how you managed to get all dishes that I didn’t even read about..very lovely platter..your thalis are so beautifully done!
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Phaanu, kaapa and thechwani everything tempts me a lot.. Delicious authentic dishes and they came out extremely droolworthy.. Very homey and fabulous.
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Lovely thali there with such authentic dishes, the phaanu is interesting , wish I had made more dishes for this state ..but I wanted to keep it to short and sweet:)..will try to get you the buttermilk recipe from my source in that region.
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I love the kaapa!! looks so homey and so healthy!!
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I have been reading and going through all of your thali posts and i must say, hats off to the incredible effort that you put up for each. This thali is truly exceptional- homey, yummy and comforting
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Lovely platter! All three dishes look good. I had shortlisted phaanu but changed my mind.
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one day you are wondering what to cook and the next you present a platter full of recipes from alien land…how do you manage, do you go shopping first or find recipes with what you have in stock..i would like to know some dat :)…this looks superb
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