Everything for your
Navratri fast

Navratri, the nine nights of the Goddess, is one of the busiest weeks of the year in our part of Ilford. Some customers fast for all nine days, some set up a golu of dolls in the front room, and many close the festival with Ayutha Pooja or Dussehra. This page brings together what those households come into the shop for, so the vrat cupboard, the puja shelf and the festive kitchen can all be sorted in one order.

Fasting foods for the nine days

A Navratri vrat changes what goes into the pan. Many families set aside wheat, rice, onion, garlic and common salt, and cook from a short list of farali ingredients: sabudana for khichdi and vada, makhana roasted in ghee, peanuts crushed into almost everything, and sendha namak in place of table salt. Pure ghee and groundnut oil are the cooking fats most fasting kitchens accept. Our Navratri fasting foods gathers these in one place, along with the few spices most families allow: cumin, black pepper, green cardamom and dry ginger.

Farali flours and grains

When rotis and rice are off the table, farali flours take their place. Rajgira, or amaranth, makes thin puris and thepla. Singhara, the water chestnut flour, goes into halwa and puris. Kuttu, which is buckwheat, is rolled into rotis or whisked into pakora batter, and samo, the barnyard millet also known as vari or bhagar, cooks like rice for khichdi. Potato starch binds doughs and crisps the coating on fasting cutlets. Browse Navratri flours and grains, and buy what the nine days will use, because these flours go stale sooner than everyday atta.

Puja essentials for the altar

Navratri puja usually begins with ghatasthapana on the first morning, when the kalash is set up, and many homes keep an akhand jyoti burning for all nine days alongside the morning and evening aarti. Lamp ghee gives a clean, steady flame for diyas and deepams, but it is made for burning and is not for eating, so keep it well away from the kitchen ghee. You will find it in Navratri puja essentials, with the everyday items for worship on our pooja essentials shelf.

Golu and Navarathiri in South Indian homes

In many Tamil, Telugu and Kannada households, Navarathiri means golu: dolls and figures arranged on stepped shelves, with friends and neighbours invited round in the evenings. Visitors usually leave with a small packet of sundal, a dry stir fry of boiled chickpeas, black-eyed beans, green gram or peanuts, tempered with mustard seeds and curry leaves and finished with grated coconut. Many families make a different sundal each day. Our chickpeas, tinned chickpeas, peanuts and desiccated coconut cover most of the nine days.

Ayutha Pooja and the padayal

On the ninth day, Ayutha Pooja honours the tools of work and study. Books, instruments, vehicles and kitchen tools are cleaned, marked with turmeric and kumkum and placed before the deity, and the padayal, the offering, is laid out beside them. A typical padayal includes pori, which is puffed rice, aval or rice flakes, pottukadalai or roasted gram, jaggery, bananas and sundal, often mixed together into pori urundai. Puffed rice, poha, roasted gram and jaggery are all part of our everyday range. Vijayadashami follows the next day, the start of new learning in many homes, and Dussehra is celebrated across the north.

Sweets and snacks for guests

With visitors calling most evenings, households keep something sweet and something savoury ready. Kheer and payasam, coconut laddoos, sheera and singhara halwa are made at home as bhog and shared as prasad, and plates of murukku and mixture go round with the tea. For sweet making, Navratri sweets covers jaggery, mishri, desiccated coconut, kheer mixes and rose and kewra water, and Navratri dry fruits and nuts has the almonds, cashews, raisins and pistachios that finish them off. Ready snacks for the long fasting afternoons sit in Navratri snacks.

Drinks for long fasting days

For anyone keeping a fruit and milk fast, drinks carry more of the day than usual. Coconut water, rose and nannari syrups, milk powder for lassi and thandai, and mango pulp for aamras and shakes are all in Navratri drinks.

Planning your Navratri shopping

The fast begins on the morning of the first day, and sabudana needs several hours of soaking, so it helps to have the first few days of shopping in before the festival starts. If your family keeps a strict vrat, check the label on anything packaged, since some mixes contain rice flour, ordinary salt or hing blended with wheat. Everything on this page comes from the shelves of our shop on Woodford Avenue. If there is something for your puja or golu that you cannot find here, ask us and we will tell you whether we can get it in.