Tomatoes cooked down with garlic, chilli and a little jaggery into a sweet-sour gravy, with crisp gram-flour sev scattered over just before eating.
What makes it sev tameta nu shaak
Ripe tomatoes, cooked soft with garlic and chilli.
Sweet-sour, with jaggery or sugar.
Thick gram-flour sev added only at the table.
Where it comes from
A Kathiawadi dhaba favourite, quick to make and eaten with bajra rotla — millet flatbread — or rotli. The sev goes on at the last moment, so some of it stays crisp and some softens into the sauce.
It's a good example of Saurashtra's cooking: garlicky and hotter than the cities', and built from what a kitchen always has — tomatoes, gram flour and spice.