The smokin’ hot country cousin of undhiyu thrives in clay pots on the outskirts of a village near Valsad.
Published in · 6 min read · Feb 21, 2021
On a dark desert highway, cool wind in my hair / Warm smell of wood fire rising up through the air…
It’s a cold February night in the pre-Covid era. I’m travelling on a particularly dark stretch of National Highway 48 on the outskirts of Dungri, a village near Valsad in south Gujarat. A modified version of the Eagles’ song starts playing in my head as a shimmering light appears at a distance. Its source: flames dancing around a matlu (clay pot) that sits with its head buried in hot, glowing embers on a mound of ash. This mound is the open-kitchen of a dhaba-style restaurant that boasts of its repute, in Gujarati, on its banner: ‘Dungri’s oldest and famous… Babubhai Nu Ubadiyu.’
The no-frills eatery is spacious, with a tin roof and long, wooden tables. Crates of vegetables and gunny bags are stacked at a side. The owner Babubhai (he refuses to reveal his last name) watches the staff keenly as they roll the matlu down the mound of ash, using a pair of wooden logs as tongs. The pot neither cracks nor do its contents spill over. A staff member cautiously unmasks the top layer of clay that seals the pot. He then pulls out a bunch of leaves blocking the neck and empties the piping hot contents into a container.
Like a hero’s entry in a Bollywood film, smoke fills up my vision before the ubadiyu becomes visible. There’s Surti papdi (flat beans) bearing the afterglow of a heated fling with fire. Purple yam sports delightful char on its sides. The roasted potatoes and sweet potatoes are like a Gujarati patriarch, a crisp, tough exterior but heart-warmingly soft on the inside.
All the ingredients are seasoned well with salt, ginger, green garlic and green chillies. Served with parcels of green chutney and glasses of buttermilk, the ubadiyu sings of the times when farmers would fill up matlas with fresh produce during winter, cook the dish in their own fields and feast under the stars, especially on festive occasions such as Makar Sankranti. This community dish been hailed as Gujarat’s “original, winter barbeque”.
Ubadiyu is the rustic root of the undhiyu — a popular, seasonal Gujarati dish featuring an array of winter greens and root vegetables, cooked either in Surti or Kathiyawadi style. The dish derives its name from the Gujarati word undhu meaning ‘upside down’. In urban homes like mine, the undhiyu (made Surti style and spiced with coriander, green garlic, dhana jeeru (coriander seeds-cumin) powder is slow-cooked straight in an aluminum container. But its country cousin stays true to tradition, where the dish is cooked in an earthen pot upturned and placed on fire. It all begins with finding the right matla.
“The ubadiyu takes at least 45 minutes to cook. We get our pots custom-made with lesser water content so that they don’t crack when exposed to high heat for long,” says Babubhai. Another difference between undhiyu and ubadiyu, he adds, is that the former is prepared in oil, while in the latter, the ingredients get cooked in the heat of their own steam.
Babubhai learnt to make this dish from his father. “He would make it for our family. Back then, we didn’t add chillies or any other spice, just salt.”
Till date, he uses whole, unrefined salt from Dharasana, a town in Valsad that was part of Mahatma Gandhi’s salt satyagraha, to aid the cooking process and enhance flavour. “It was my father who coaxed me to start selling ubadiyu so that public could try it because now, very few know how to make ubadiyu,” he says, as he pulls out a clay pot to prepare the next batch of ubadiyu.
From Diwali to Holi is the season to enjoy this dish. At Babubhai Nu Ubadiyu, it’s sold by weight and the diners include locals as well as travellers from across Gujarat and beyond. A kilo costs Rs 200, and a pot can hold up to 12 kilos of ubadiyu.
The base layer is of papdi. “We get about 18 varieties of papdi in Gujarat and we use three of them,” he informs. This includes Surti papdi, sourced from Katargam, a suburb in Surat known for its green bean, along with local varieties from nearby villages “that are sweeter and more organic”.
Potatoes, purple yam, brinjal form the next three consecutive layers and then, it’s papdi again. The layers are decided basis the cooking time of ingredients. Potatoes, for instance, cook the fastest and are placed in the middle. “I make sure there is not even a bit of empty space between the layers. If there’s even a bit of gap, matlu paake nai (the pot won’t get cooked),” he adds.
Once the ingredients are in place, he stuffs ajwain leaves at the top to ensure the topmost layer of papdi doesn’t get burnt by direct heat. Some versions also layer the ubadiyu with kalhar (Indian nettle), lime and kamboi (black honey shrub) as flavouring agents. Then, the pot is sealed with clay, upturned and placed on the embers. Wood and dried dung cakes are placed around it, and the fire is lit.
Like the Gujarati ubadiyu, Parsis have a meat version called umbariyu. “From the local vegetable dish undhiu, a mixed dish of soft vegetables (beans, sweet potato, brinjal, red pumpkin) baked underground in a handa, has emerged the Parsi oberu or umberio, to which the meat of game like quail is sometimes added,” mentions KT Achaya in his book, A Historical Dictionary of Indian Food. Some versions include kebabs and eggs too, as Perzen Patel aka Bawi Bride mentions in her blog. In the Raigad district of Maharashtra, meanwhile, farmers celebrate the harvest of vaal (field beans) with a similar dish called popti, where the beans, chicken and eggs are cooked in an earthen pot in the farm.
As we warm up near the crackling fire to combat the cold, Babubhai says, “When we began, we were the only ones here. In the last 15 years, about 50 such stalls have come up in this stretch.” A few joints near Babubhai Nu Ubadiyu sell chicken ubadiyu as well.
Babubhai, however, prefers to sell the vegetarian version only. “It is the taste of my childhood,” he says. It’s feels like an apt cue to tuck into the dish. One bite in, and the noise on the highway fades in the background as the robust flavour of greens engulfs my senses.
A year later, as I sit to write down this piece, my brain instantly conjures up the taste of the toasty-sweet flavour of the purple yam. I can feel the soft texture of well-cooked potatoes on my taste buds and savour the spiced earthiness of papdi. I yearn to return to Valsad to feast on the ubadiyu and seek solace in memories of simpler times, where the only mask was the lid on a matla.
