So, what’s your favorite?

The other day I sat down to eat a breakfast of rotla, gol (jaggery) and dahi – quite a change from my usual breakfast of boiled egg and toast or corn flakes.

I relished it, thinking of how much I loved the rotlo (singular) – a thick chapatti made of bajra (pearl millet) flour – a typical Gujarati winter food.

Then slowly I began to think of the other Gujarati foods I really, really love… and in doing this I declared to myself that my top three had to be rotla, khichdi and raab.

Khichdi is rice and daal cooked together, sometimes made with tur daal, sometimes with moong daal, and tempered with warm spices. Often, khichdi is dismissed as boring, or ‘sick people’s food’. But to me, it’s a warm, soft, comfort food – in fact, my go-to comfort dinner after a long day, tiring day.

Raab is a delicate, sweet porridge made with wheat flour and jaggery, lightly spiced with cloves and cinnamon. I absolutely love it! It was something I ate as a baby, calling it raabi then. Every time I eat it now, it makes me feel warm and comforted, and reminds me of my childhood…

When people find out how much I love food, one of the inevitable questions that comes my way is “What’s you’re favorite food?”. And this stumps me every time! When there are endless dishes in the world, so many of which I love, each for a different reasons, and so many yet to be discovered… how can I pick just one that I love the most? It’s simply not possible. It’s a task neither my brain nor my stomach can comprehend, or wants to!

But as I sat there eating my breakfast rotlo, identifying my favorite Gujarati foods, I had a revelation. I realized that if the question were to be more specific, say if I was asked what my favorite Gujarati food was, or Konkani food was, I wouldn’t find it as difficult to name my top two or three.

Tell me in the comments:

What’s your favorite food in the whole wide world?

And what is your favorite food of your native cuisine?

(Bonus question: Which question was harder to answer?)