Mumbai:
You thought Maharashtrian cuisine was about vada-pav and misal pav? Well, Maharashtra's Navnirman Sena (MNS) now wants to dish out some more yummy fare for you.
To begin with, it wants you to savour some Solapuri jungli kombdi and Kolhapuri tambda rassa with all the homebred spice and flavour thrown in for good measure, as it were.
The party wants hotel management and catering colleges to include preparation of these dishes to be part of the course curriculum in order to save traditional Maharashtrian cuisine.
"Around 50,000 people had come to the Maharashtrian cuisine festival organised by the MNS. Going by the phenomenal response, we have decided to write to all hotel management institutes in the state to introduce the cuisine as part of the curriculum. It will give our future generation a whiff of our traditional dishes," said MNS Vice President Shalini Thackeray.
The MNS organised a five-day food festival, Maharashtra Mazha at Andheri to mark the state's golden jubilee.
The festival offered Marathi dishes from five regions of the state -- Konkan, Western Maharashtra, Khandesh, Vidarbha and Marathwada.
"For the last seven or eight years, we have been teaching preparation of Marathi cuisine. From modak and puran poli to vegetables prepared la Konkan," said Dr Bigyan Verma, director of Kohinoor Business School and Centre for Management Research, Khandala.
Verma, however, said the college had not received any letter from the MNS.
B P Sahni, director, Bunts Sangh Ramnath Payyade College of Hospitality Management at Kurla said, "One of our colleagues has a recipe book in Marathi, authored by his grandmother. The book is being translated into English for our students."
Sahni too said the college had not yet received any letter from the MNS.