Sonia Gandhi Loves Gujarati, Bengali Food, "Can't Go A Day Without" This Dish

After moving from Italy to India, one of the biggest adjustments for Sonia Gandhi was food. She says it was difficult for her to enjoy Indian food when she first moved, but with time, she not only fell in love with it but also learned to cook.

Among her favourite cuisines in India are Bengali and Gujarati (specifically from Surat), and one of the staples of her kitchen is "arhar ki daal", known also as pigeon pea lentils.

Sitting beside her daughter Priyanka, Sonia Gandhi says, "It took me time to enjoy Indian food," in a video she posted on X on Wednesday. 

When asked what her favourites are, she says, "I love kebabs, chicken tikka, tandoori chicken, dal makhani, and Kashmiri kofta and the haakh." 

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Priyanka Gandhi then interrupts to remind her of "dal-chawal".

"In our house, from the day I came to this house till today, the only dal cooked is arhar ki dal. No other dal," Sonia Gandhi then says. 

Priyanka also reminds that her mother used to make khandvi for them when they were children, which, Sonia says, was "very easy". Khandvi is a popular savoury snack from Gujarat. 

The conversation then shifts to Indira Gandhi, who, Priyanka says, could not cook. However, Sonia Gandhi contests that even though her mother-in-law could not cook, she had an acute sense of what to add to the food to make it better. 

"Food has always had a special place in my story. It was while looking for a good meal that I met Rajiv, and fell in love. Years later, India came to me the same way, one meal at a time. At first the variety amazed me and the spice scared me. Now dal chawal is the taste of home, and I can't go a day without it," Gandhi captioned the post. 

She shared her fondness for food a day after her memoir 'Belonging: A Journey Of Love' came out, which also makes several references to how food always played an important role in her life. 

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She recalls that when she discovered how delicious Gujarati food was, she felt "foolish" about her visit there in 1969 with Indira Gandhi when she refused to taste anything and survived on watermelon and other fruits for four days. 

"Couldn't Escape The Smell Of Indian Spices"

When she first came to Delhi and stayed at poet Harivansh Rai Bachchan's house, whom she refers to as "Uncle Bachchan", Sonia Gandhi writes that she could never escape the smell of spices, which would find its way into her hair and clothes. 

"Besides my family I missed my Italian food most, but in those days nothing was available that was in any way close to it: no oven-fresh bread with its delicious aroma, no pasta, no cheeses, no olive oil, except in tiny tins in pharmacies, meant for massage rather than cooking. Accustomed as I was to a quick Italian breakfast of caffe latte and a cornetto pastry, I was faced with eggs, papaya, and yoghurt, distasteful to me at that hour of the day -- but being too shy to refuse, I would swallow them -- washed down with plenty of water," Gandhi writes in her memoir. 

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"I'd be famished, my mouth watering at the sight of an appetising looking dish. Given the assurance that it wasn't spicy, I'd eagerly taste it and gasp -- why wouldn't people tell me it was hellishly hot? Why were they being so deceitful? It was much later, when I learnt to love Indian food, that I understood that people accustomed to eating food cooked with spices cannot always judge their potency correctly," she adds. 

Gandhi also recalls that it was her mother-in-law's maternal aunt, Bappi Kathju, who taught her the effects of different spices. When Gandhi overcame her aversion to spices, she learnt how to prepare some of Kathju's specialties.

"I still have the old diary where I'd noted down her instructions. Meat dishes like mutton koftas and botidar salan, and vegetable preparations like dum aloo, methi chaman, and nadru, lotus-root crisps, became my favourite dishes, though it took me many attempts to achieve the flavour and texture of her creations," she writes. 

"As time went by I learned to appreciate food from other parts of India as well: Punjabi sarson ka saag, mustard greens, with maize flour, makki ki roti, even karela, bitter gourd, which I was introduced to at a friend's house; delicious soft idli and crisp dosa with sambar from South India; Lucknow's mouth-watering Kakori kawab with rumali roti, north-western kababs and butter chicken served with naans; dishes from Bengal; dishes from Goa -- the list kept growing with each culinary surprise."