Dhokli, Gatte & the Desi World of Pasta
The first time pasta was cooked at our home was when I was just 10 years old. I almost cried my way into convincing Papa to buy a packet of macaroni because it was the hottest new tiffin trend at school, and I didn’t want to be left behind. When he finally came home with a huge packet of macaroni and a ready-made pasta sauce, I was over the moon. I read the cooking instructions aloud as Maa prepared this foreign dish in our kitchen. Her very first reaction was, “Ye kaccha kaccha hai” — it feels uncooked. Al dente, as Italians say, though we had no idea what that meant back then.
Over time, more and more pasta packets made their way into our kitchen — penne, fusilli, spaghetti. From an evening snack to salads to one-pot dinners, I perfected my pasta skills and even learned to make sauces from scratch. But the real change came in ninth grade when I discovered gnocchi and made the pasta from scratch for the first time.
It was a long, tedious process: boiling the potatoes, mashing them, kneading the dough, shaping the gnocchi, and finally cooking them in a large pot of salted water. They sank at first, and when they floated back to the surface, my mom exclaimed, “Ye toh dhokli jaisa hai!” It is exactly like dhokli, a dish common in Gujarat and Rajasthan made with gram flour.
Cut to last month, when my fellow native food enthusiast, Sheetal Bhatt’s Tuver na Baakda ma Dhokli won Nonna Approved Recipe Competition by Pasta Grannies. Pasta Grannies, a popular online project and YouTube channel, celebrates traditional Italian pasta-making, especially by showcasing grandmothers (nonne) from different regions of Italy as they prepare handmade pasta using age-old family recipes and techniques. The project was started by Italian food writer and filmmaker Vera Neitzel. She travels across Italy visiting these talented grandmothers, filming their hands-on pasta-making, sharing their stories, recipes, and preserving this rich culinary heritage.
Seeing Sheetal’s family recipe of dhokli win a pasta award brought back memories — not just of dhokli but of so many pasta-like desi dishes we have made in our Rajasthani home.
Photo from Pasta Grannies, credit Sheetal Bhatt
At its core, pasta is an unassuming dish made from freshly hand-rolled dough, shaped, boiled, and cooked in a sauce. And that’s exactly the process many Indian dishes follow too.
Dhokli
Doughnut-shaped in Rajasthan and flat, diamond-shaped pieces in Gujarat, dhokli is a staple comfort food made from wheat flour dough simmered in soupy dal. Made primarily with wheat flour and a mix of spices, these hand-rolled pieces remind me of ravioli without the stuffing.
Rabodi
Rabodi begins as a simple paste made from buttermilk and makkai (corn) flour. This mixture is cooked until thick, then spooned onto a cloth in small, uneven patches. Under the sun, the paste slowly dries and hardens into tangy, papad-like flakes. These dried flakes are later broken into pieces and cooked in a light, tangy buttermilk curry, making it a truly special dish. In a way, rabodi feels like a rustic version of pasta sheets—thin, tender, and soaked in sauce but with a unique tangy twist of its own.
Mangodi (or Vadi)
Mangodi, called Vadi in parts of Punjab, Haryana, and Uttar Pradesh, are small, dried nuggets or bite-sized dumplings made from spiced gram flour (besan) batter. After drying, they are boiled and added to curries – sometimes with vegetables like potatoes, peas, and tomatoes. Their soft, pillowy texture and irregular nugget shape instantly reminded me of gnocchi.
Gatte
Gatte are thick, cylindrical rolls of gram flour dough, sliced into rounds or oval shapes, then cooked in rich, spicy gravies. The dough is made from besan mixed with turmeric, chili powder, and other spices, giving it a robust flavour. Gatte is a beloved dish in Rajasthan and parts of Gujarat, similar to penne or rigatoni but with a distinct desi twist. There are regional variations too, like Belle, thin cylindrical rolls cooked in curd — and Govind Gatta, which is stuffed with khoya and nuts, then fried to be crisp on the outside and soft inside.
A shared language of hands, heat, and heritage
What ties dhokli to ravioli, or mangodi to gnocchi is the shared human instinct to shape dough by hand, to dry, boil, steam, or simmer humble ingredients into something nourishing and wholesome. Across continents and centuries, civilisations have leaned on the same cooking techniques — kneading, sun-drying, fermenting, slow-cooking — as a way of transforming what’s local and available into what’s comforting and communal.
The ingredients may be different, but the methods echo one another, revealing a beautiful truth: that food is a living thread binding cultures, not by recipe, but by human instinct. It is a reminder that our kitchens, no matter where they are, have always been part of a larger, shared story.
