Find recipes for kebabs, fish roe and stews in this new Sindhi cookbook

My interest in Sindhi cuisine began by accident. Last year, in the middle of an otherwise ordinary exchange, my father mentioned that our family traced its roots to Sukkur—also known as Sakhar—a historic city on the western bank of the Indus River in Sindh, now in Pakistan.

Until then, Sindhi identity had existed in my life more as a backdrop than something I actively explored. It surfaced during festivals and family gatherings, when kadhi simmered on the stove or koki (onion coriander flatbread) crisped on the tawa. Food was something we inherited, not questioned.

That conversation shifted something. As I began reading about Sukkur, I discovered a region shaped by agricultural abundance—green vegetables, mustard greens, dates, lotus stem and river fish. It struck me then how little I had thought about a food culture that was, in fact, my own.

Mumbai-based food consultant, restaurateur and writer Reshma Sanghi understands that distance intimately. For her, the pandemic became a turning point. While much of the world spent time perfecting sourdough or whipping up Dalgona coffee, she found herself drawn instead to memory.

Raised in a Thathai Sindhi household, with her maternal roots in Thatta (now in present-day Karachi), her childhood was shaped by dishes rarely seen on restaurant menus—methi me aani ji bhaji (gram flour dumplings with fenugreek) and sonta (a fish and vegetable stew). Yet, beyond staples like dal pakwan (crisp rotis with dal stew) and koki, Sanghi did not know how to cook most of what she had grown up eating. When cravings struck, she would simply head to her mother’s home, until her mother’s passing took that comfort away.

During the covid lockdown, while clearing old cupboards, Sanghi discovered a notebook of recipes she had jotted down with her mother’s help when she married into a Marwari household 38 years ago. Around the same time, her daughter, visiting from Copenhagen, asked a simple question: How will I make Nani’s food? “That made me pause,” Sanghi says. “I realised if I didn’t document these recipes, they would disappear with us.”

What began as a personal archive—compiling her mother’s recipes into a PDF—slowly expanded into something larger. More than three years later, it culminated in a book titled Sindhi Fare, a collection of 75 recipes rooted in memory and migration.

Sanghi's book covers breakfast, snacks, sabzis, thadri (a Sindhi festival that worships goddess Sheetla) preparations, curries, meats, seafood, condiments and sweets. While most dishes emerge from her Sindhi inheritance, others—like poori aloo or tikki—reflect the porousness of domestic kitchens, where Sunday specials often ignored rigid cultural borders.

Breakfast features Sindhi staples like meethi seviyun (sweet vermicelli), dal pakwan and gur lola (flatbread with jaggery syrup) alongside family dishes such as laal chawan ji kutti—a crumble made from flour milled from a red rice variety available in Mumbai’s Chembur neighbourhood. Another childhood favourite, enjoyed at lunch or dinner, is methi me aani ji bhaji. It resembles Rajasthani gatta at first glance, but its gravy is made from fenugreek and coriander.

The book includes non-vegetarian recipes like fote bhugo mutton (a cardamom-scented broth), seyal mutton (mutton stew), daag me chicken with caramelised onions, aani fry (pan-fried fish roe) and palle jo bhat (a fish stew paired with turmeric rice). “I always assumed what we ate was standard Sindhi food,” she says. “It’s only when I began documenting recipes that I realised how distinct our versions were.” In Sindh, fish and fish roe (called aani) have historically been central not just to the diet, but to identity itself, shaped by life along the Indus river. Long before Partition, fish carried meaning beyond the kitchen, appearing in stories, beliefs, and community symbolism. For instance, the pallo (or hilsa) is deeply intertwined with the Sindhi deity Jhulelal, who is depicted sitting on it.

Unlike many regional cuisines anchored in canonical dishes, Sindhi cooking evolved through movement and displacement. After Partition, Sindhi families moved to refugee camps across western and northern India. In Mumbai, where Sanghi’s family resettled, Chembur and Kalyan Camp (now Ulhasnagar) became key hubs.

Recipes travelled with them, adapting to new geographies and markets while absorbing influences along the way—from Gujarat and Rajasthan to Punjab and beyond. Stuffed parathas, multi-dal preparations like tidali and panchratni dal, wheat halwas resembling karaha prasad, kebabs shaped by Muslim rule, and Persian-introduced ingredients like saffron and rosewater all found their way into Sindhi kitchens.

As Sindhis rebuilt their lives in unfamiliar landscapes, food became both memory and method, guided by practicality as much as nostalgia. “I slowly began noticing the intelligence embedded in these practices,” Sanghi says. “My mother would sun-dry karela peels to fry later with dal-chawal. Seasonal vegetables were preserved as kachris or fryums. Ingredients were dried, stored and repurposed—not out of ideology, but necessity.”

Long before formally documenting these recipes, this rediscovery had begun shaping her professional work. At Mumbai’s Kitab Khana, where she launched her vegetarian restaurant Food for Thought in 2011, koki became a staple for office-goers. At her second restaurant, Plenty in Fort, she introduced a non-vegetarian thali with dishes like thoom me machi (garlic-laced fish) and bhugal kofta curry (mutton meatball curry).

The response was often emotional. “Older diners would come and say, ‘This is what my nani used to make,’” she recalls.

Through this journey, Sanghi began to see Sindhi cuisine less as a catalogue of iconic dishes and more as an evolving domestic language—shaped not by rigid authenticity but by adaptation. In compiling her book, she did not set out to define Sindhi cuisine. “I just wanted to preserve what my mother made,” she says.

In documenting these recipes, she wasn’t just passing them on to the next generation. She was, in many ways, finally returning to them herself.

Recipe for Sundkhand (mixed nuts confectionary)

Makes 10-12 pieces

Ingredients

1 tbsp refined oil to grease the tin

130g pistachios, cut into small pieces

130 g almonds, cut into small pieces

30g ghee for the gum + 80g for the atta

110g gum (gond)

110g wholewheat flour (atta)

¼ cup black raisins

40g poppy seeds (khus khus)

1 tbsp ginger powder

1 tsp nutmeg powder

2 tsp mace powder

1/8 tsp salt

200g sugar

120 ml water

Method

Grease an 8"x 8" tin with the oil and set aside.

Pre-heat the oven at 150°C. Spread the almonds and pistachios together in the oven tray and toast them for 10-12 minutes. Remove them and set aside to cool.

In a large kadai, heat 30 g ghee over low heat. Once the ghee melts, add the gum and stir continuously until it puffs up and starts changing colour. Remove from heat and transfer the gum to a plate to cool. Once cool, add the gum to a mixer grinder and grind at medium setting into a powder.

In the same kadai, heat 80g ghee over medium heat. Add the atta and reduce the heat to low. Stir continuously until the atta is brown and fragrant. This should take approximately 20 minutes.

To the roasted atta, add the raisins and khus khus. Stir for another 5 minutes.

Add the pistachios, almonds, ginger powder, nutmeg powder, mace powder, powdered gum and salt. Stir for another 5 minutes. At this point, turn the heat off while you make the syrup.

In a medium-sized saucepan, mix the sugar and water and place over high heat until the sugar dissolves. Continue boiling the syrup for another 25-30 seconds.

Now place the kadai with the atta mix back over high heat. Immediately pour the boiling syrup into the kadai and stir for 10-12 seconds.

Remove the kadai from heat and immediately pour the batter into the greased tin. Set aside to cool for 10-15 minutes. Cut into diamond shapes or any shape of your choice.

Book: Sindhi Fare

Author: Reshma Sanghi

Published by: Vakils, Feffer & Simons Pvt Ltd

Price: ₹1,950

Number of pages: 188