One of the few vegetarian Parsi dishes I love eating is Ravaiya. These baby eggplants stuffed with Parsi green chutney make for a great mid-week meal or an accompaniment to a meaty fiesta.

Anyways, I digress. How these tarts came into being has an interesting story. About a year ago, I was contacted by my friend Mohit Balachandran who then worked for India’s chain of Bombay inspired cafes, Sodabottleopenerwala. He wanted to promote the restaurant’s breakfast slot and thought it would be great to do a popup menu together.

Now I’ve done Parsi festivals before but never one for breakfast so I was extremely excited. Over another two cups of cold coffee, we discussed the logistics around the festival and I told him I’d get back to him with a menu. And just before I was about to leave, he casually says, “Just one thing Perzen. We thought it would be great to do an all-veg breakfast festival as it would complement what we already do here at the restaurant”. Let me tell you if this was a cartoon show you would have seen my jaw drop to the floor in fear. Instead I just casually said yes okay, that should be doable and wrapped up the meeting.

Inside, my stomach was rolling over in doubt. Breakfast was a hard enough menu to curate. And, to do it without meat and eggs but to still make it ‘Parsi’ was going to be hard if not impossible.

Over the next week my partner and I would keep brainstorming and without even realising would suggest things like Bacon Akoori or Russian Chicken Chapat before the internal bell rang in our heads and reminded us that it was supposed to be VEGETARIAN! Finally, we decided to list down all the vegetarian Parsi dishes we knew and then see if any of those could be modified for a breakfast menu. We did what any self-respecting Parsi would do in the absence of having meat and eggs. We took a vegetarian dish we loved and added white sauce, cheese, and pastry to it. And, the Ravaiya Tart was born.

The result was utterly delicious. The Ravaiya tart passed all the taste tests and was on the Sodabottleopenerwala menu as a ‘mini’ tart for two months as part of their breakfast menu. You can make this as a large tart for a lunch or dinner party using home-made shortcrust pastry. Or, you can take a shortcut and use readymade sheets as suggested in the recipe. I prefer shortcrust over puff for this particular one though any will do if you are squeezed for time. Hope you enjoy making it!