Gunla Festival Bowl · Nine-Bean Soup

Kwati

Photo: Haribanshnp / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0

The soup is traditionally built from nine different sprouted beans and legumes at once, simmered together into one thick, protein-heavy bowl.

Kwati is a mixed soup of sprouted beans and legumes — black gram, chickpea, soybean, field pea and more — simmered with ginger, garlic and spice into a hearty broth. Newari households and valley eateries cook it especially around the monsoon-season Gunla festival, when it's thought to help the body through the wet months.

Why it's made this way: Its multi-bean recipe and monsoon timing tie it to Gunla, a sacred month in the Newar Buddhist calendar, when the dish is traditionally eaten across the valley.