This Indian restaurant is offering up special dishes for Diwali this year

A new Indian restaurant in London is serving up a pair of special dishes to mark Diwali this year. 

Undhiyu and jalebi aren't specifically linked to the five day festival of lights, but Jignesh Bhanushali, co-owner of Turmeric The Indian Eatery, said they're popular in the western part of India where he's from. 

They're also hard to find in London, he said. 

"It's a blend of vegetables, some spices, some dumplings, nuts and stuff, a lot of oil, it's great," he said, describing undhiyu, a dish that is typically enjoyed in January. 

"What happens in the winter time, all the harvest vegetables and the root vegetables, they have been cooked underground. They dig a big hole in the ground and they put a big oven pot vessel under the ground, over charcoal and fire, and they throw all those harvest root vegetables in the pot." 

It takes at least three to four hours to cook, said Bhanushali. That's why the restaurant is taking pre-orders of the dish for Saturday. 

There are also different versions of jalebi depending on where in India you are, he said, but he'll be putting his own local spin on it — unique to the western state of Gujarat. 

"It's a fermented batter fried in clarified butter, which is a ghee, we use a pure form of ghee, soaked in a sugar syrup and garnished with some pistachio and nuts."

'I have to have it'

Among their customers for Saturday is Parshati Patel, an astrophysicist at Western University's Institute for Earth and Space Exploration.

"It's been a while since I've had jalebi, and the moment I saw it I was like 'I have to have it,'" she said.

"There's a lot of Indian food in London but in India each province has its own kind of food and Gujarati is a kind of food that doesn't still exist here in London, so when I saw it I was really excited because I normally have to go to Mississauga to get something like that, or Brampton."

Diwali marks a triumph of light over darkness and good over evil, and is celebrated all over the world by Hindus, Jains and Sikhs. The festivities vary across cultural groups, but the story behind it, according to Hindus, involves Rama (an incarnation of the deity Vishnu), who defeats the demon king Ravana and returns to his people after 14 years of exile.

Patel said usually the celebration of Diwali would involve gathering family together and swapping sweets and gifts, but this year, because of the pandemic, the celebration will be kept to her own household. 

She said she'll decorate the entrance of her home with temporary artwork called rangoli, which is usually made with coloured powder, lentils, rice or flowers. She will also light diyas, which are traditionally small clay pots with a wick, filled with oil or ghee. 

"Diwali has different stories attached to it depending on where you're from in India. One of the thing for us Gujaratis, is that Diwali, the day of Diwali, is also the time we start our new year. We would say happy Diwali and we would say Saal Mubarak, which is Happy New Year." 

On Saturday, the Bhanushalis will be helping Londoners celebrate Diwali. But on Sunday, they will celebrate as a family. 

"It's like a cheering up and celebrating happiness, this is called Diwali," said Khushbu Bhanushali. "If you have bad feelings for anyone, this is the day that you can sort that out. You can move on."

"It's a new year for us," her husband explained. "We think whatever happens to us in the past we should keep that in the past and we should move forward to live a better life, to grow, to improve, to learn. That's what Diwali tells us."