On The Road: Rajasthan

Its signature dish may be a fragrant and spicy mutton curry but there’s lots more to try in this northern Indian state, including corn pakoras sprinkled with mango and syrupy gulab jamun.

- Lucy Gillmore

The bread is baking in a mound of smoking cow dung. Small balls of dough are bedded into the hot ash while dhal is stirred over the flickering flames and chunks of masala marinated mutton sizzle on a spit. It might not sound like the most glamorous introduction to Rajasthan’s cuisine, but nomadic romance is woven through this vast, sun-seared desert state, and its history of maharajahs, Mughal emperors and hardy camel herders. This is not the desert, however, but the courtyard garden of the Dera Mandawa, Durga Singh’s ancestral home and now a heritage homestay in Jaipur (deramandawa.com). Host, agriculturalist and eco-warrior, Durga is passionate about rural Rajasthani cooking. He has a farm a few hours from the city but keeps a few cows in Jaipur. Their dung, along with leftover food, is fed into Dera Mandawa’s bio-gas plant to produce the methane gas used in the kitchen. 

The skewered meat has been marinated in yogurt, turmeric, ginger, coriander, chilli and wild cucumber. It’s not mutton at all, it turns out, but kid goat. “If you fed me mutton I’d be offended,” laughs Durga. In Rajasthan most mutton dishes are the far more tender baby goat. It has a fragrant, tangy taste, while the bread rolls are smeared with ghee. 

In India, ghee is a national obsession. Durga is in full flow. “Is the crumble laughing or crying?” He rubs his hands together at my look of bewilderment. “It’s a typical Rajasthani saying meaning how much ghee has been used. If your picnic is crying it’s dripping ghee, if it’s laughing the host has been mean.”