In many Adivasi kitchens of northern Gujarat, one can find a round bottom clay vessel called a 'haandlu', with a 'saatvo', a long wooden ladle carved with scoops on both ends. The two are designed in relation to each other: the curve of the ladle follows the pot’s contour, blending ingredients like leafy greens or maize grits into a consistent texture without damaging the clay surface. It is this delicate ecosystem of culinary practices, vessels, and ingredients that exist together that Sheetal Bhatt documents in her new book, 'Silent Cuisines: The Unsung & Disappearing Foodways of Gujarat’s Adivasis'.
Over an extended immersive fieldwork, Sheetal, along with the team of Aranya, travelled across six northeastern districts of Gujarat — Banaskantha, Sabarkantha, Aravalli, Mahisagar, Panchmahal and Dahod — entering kitchens, forest fringes, and hill villages to gather over fifty heirloom recipes from Garasia, Dungri Garasia, and Bhil households. She documented vernacular names, mapped seasonal rhythms, photographed vessels and tools, and captured the voices of elders who still remembered the foods of their youth. The book, is a hardbound volume of around 150 pages that combines evocative imagery with careful documentation, presenting recipes alongside notes on foraging, utensils, habitats, and the fragile cultural contexts that sustain them.
But for Sheetal, the act of writing 'Silent Cuisines' was never just about collecting dishes. “It’s more of a food book than a recipe book. The recipes are incidental. They had to be included, because if you want to talk about these foodways, the way to conserve them is to ensure that the recipes are taken forward. But I don’t expect people to cook from it,” she explains. “The real intent was to document the way it is cooked, the way the ingredients have been used traditionally, and the way it has been eaten.”
Having worked with marginalised communities as a social development professional, Sheetal has been documenting Gujarati foodways through her website, 'The Route 2 Roots' for over a decade, a journey that began with celebrating the joy of cooking but soon led her toward the overlooked "micro-cuisines” of the state. Beyond the much-repeated staples of dhokla, thepla, or khaman, she found a rich terrain of foods voicing the unvoiced cuisines, including Adivasi traditions, biodiversity, and foraged greens that rarely make their way into mainstream Gujarati identity. Silent Cuisines is an outcome of this inquiry, as well as her long association with grassroots organisations like DISHA, which has worked with Adivasi communities on land rights and sustainable farming since the 1980s. Through them, Sheetal encountered farmers who continue to grow heritage grains and forage wild greens, yet often find little recognition or market for their produce.
That invisibility extended into the kitchen itself. Sheetal noticed that many families felt their foods were “not good enough,” dismissing them as “poor man’s food". This was unlike other communities that spoke with pride about their cuisines. The team behind the book hoped that by documenting and celebrating these food traditions, younger generations might begin to value them too, instead of seeing only outside foods — Chinese fried rice, street snacks, packaged products, that have now made their way into remote villages as well — as aspirational.
This concern runs through the pages of the book. Recipes are never presented without the stories behind them: how a dish emerged, why certain ingredients were used sparingly, and how ecological realities shaped culinary choices. Sheetal describes, for example, a rustic 'makai no rotlo' made with wild greens. In times of scarcity, when maize flour was limited, a handful of flour was stretched to bind a whole bunch of greens into a single bread, ensuring that large families could be fed with minimal grain. Such recipes embody what she calls “smart foodways”, born from the resilience and resourcefulness of these communities.
Utensils, too, carry meaning. The haandlu and saatvo along with the 'shaado' (a wide-mouthed cooking vessel), 'paatiyo' (a flat clay griddle), 'dobhalo' (a deep vessel for boiling or stewing), and the 'vaadiyo' (a container for storing grains) are essential vessels of memory; their disappearance mirroring the decline of clayware economies once central to Adivasi life. These utensils were once made by potter families and exchanged through barter — grain, vegetables, or labor offered in return for pots that sustained everyday cooking. With the shift to steel and aluminium cookware, this system has all but vanished, taking with it not just the tools of cooking but the small economies and interdependencies that supported them.
Underlying the book is also an ecological urgency. Shrinking forests, the use of pesticides, and shifts in farming practices mean that many wild greens once foraged as everyday staples are disappearing. Seasonal foods that once anchored diets are being replaced by market vegetables that are available all year-round. For Sheetal, documenting these practices is an act of conservation. “ It's like if I don’t continue to cook my own heritage foods, my coming generations are not going to know what those foods are. Preservation is only possible if these dishes remain on our tables,” she says.
The making of 'Silent Cuisines' was itself an intensive, almost ethnographic process. Bhatt and her collaborators aligned their travels with agricultural and ecological calendars — rushing to certain villages within the ten-day bloom of a flower, or attending grain festivals to witness how rituals shaped eating. The project took nearly three years, and its sequel, covering the southern belt of Gujarat, is already in the works.
Within its pages, readers will encounter pumpkin kheer, stir-fried moringa flowers, or sun-dried pumpkin peel curry — dishes that may seem unfamiliar but are anchored in logic, seasonality, and sustenance, offering a window into a world where food was a direct extension of land and life. The recipes in a book a reveal deeper culinary intelligence and a culture linked to indigenous identity and ways of being that are at risk of being erased. “Cooking as a life skill is very important,” Sheetal insists. “Once you cook, you learn the seasons, the localness of ingredients, and the rhythm of seasons." Without that, she implies, we distance ourselves from both health, environment, and heritage.
Follow Sheetal here and buy 'Silent Cuisines: The Unsung & Disappearing Foodways of Gujarat’s Adivasis' here.
If you enjoyed reading this here's more from Homegrown:
Rambutan: A Cookbook, Pop-up, & Restaurant Bringing Sri Lanka To London's Borough Market
Parag Tandel’s Limited Edition Book Is A Culinary Archive Of Mumbai’s Koli Community
Shahu Patole’s New Book Serves Up A Powerful Critique Of Caste Through The Lens Of Food