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For other destinations and types of holiday, visit Kuoni
For other destinations and types of holiday, visit Kuoni 

Things to do in India

The Blue House cooking class

Join us in our Jodhpur home to cook and enjoy delicious family recipes …

By Chandra Kala Purohit
Cook and host

This cooking experience takes place in our Jodhpur family home, a typical blue house with rooftop views over the city and Mehrangarh Fort. We’re Brahmins so we love to cook; our cuisine is vegetarian and doesn’t include any onion or garlic, instead we use a spice mix called asafoetida. My husband Lalit was a tour guide and we both enjoyed hosting guests, so in 2014 we decided to open our home to visitors and run this cooking class. Guests are like gods in our culture and we love welcoming them.

To start, you’ll learn how to make pakoras with tamarind and jaggery chutney served with masala tea, which we’ll enjoy on the rooftop looking out over the city. Then I’ll lead the main cooking demonstration, translated by Lalit who speaks fluent English. The dishes are made from seasonal vegetables such as eggplant, okra, cauliflower and cabbage. We also make a dahl and chapati followed by a Rajasthan thali and to finish, we serve a sweet such as halva.

I learnt my cooking skills from my mother and grandmother, as in India we cook communally and share recipes and secrets through the generations. As I teach, we chat about the medicinal benefits of spices in Indian cuisine. For example, coriander is good for blood pressure and turmeric is good for your skin. Rather than buy a pre-mix masala, we like ours fresh and will show you how to grind up a mix of cardamom, black pepper and ginger, which is wonderful in tea.

The whole experience takes up to two hours and we give guests handwritten recipes so they can recreate the meals when they get home. Often, we stay in touch with guests and they like to send us pictures of their families and the meals they make. It’s a very leisurely experience, we go at your speed and make sure you feel at home. We love hosting guests because they’re always so warm and happy – it makes us happy too.

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  • Culture
  • Food & Drink
  • Trips to take

Available in these itineraries…

Alfred & Chandra Kala Purohit

Chandra Kala Purohit lives in Jodhpur with her husband Lalit, a former tour guide who loved to invite visitors in for tea – which is how the Blue House cooking classes began. An accomplished chef, Chandra learnt her skills from her mother and grandmother, later passing them down to her own daughter. Chandra loves hosting guests in her home and teaching them how to make authentic Rajasthani food.
Chandra Kala Purohit, host of the Blue House cooking class

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