India on My Platter (24 page)

Around dinner time, I rose from my stupor, and wandered around Mall Road that was buzzing with action. It was completely tailored to the clientele that visited this place. Video games, bangle shops, small hotels and restaurants filled the streets. Couples holding hands walked the streets, while I looked for more food. One of the most popular places on the street was a lovely omelette centre. How could I not go in? Khursheed Bhai met me and introduced himself; he has been in charge of the place for 20 years. The restaurant had opened in 1918. Khursheed has been given star ratings and reviews by magazines and newspapers. He was a favourite in and around the area.

Here, I learnt how to flip a cheese omelette. The bread was toasted with cheese in a pan and then coated with egg. The secret trick was the turmeric and the green chillies. He gave me a fantastic tip to cook eggs with only chopped green chillies and not use any salt. He claimed that the eggs tasted both salty and spicy with just the chillies. I returned the good feeling by making a
Schezwan Cheese Omelette.

S
CHEZWAN
C
HEESE
O
MELETTE

(Omelette cooked with spicy Schezwan sauce and cheese.)

Ingredients

Method

1.  Take a bowl and crack open the eggs; season with salt and pepper. Whisk well to combine.

2.  Heat oil in a non-stick frying pan. Pour half of the egg mix in and spread it out.

3.  Place four slices of bread over the egg. Pour the remaining half of the egg mix over the bread and spread well.

4.  After a few minutes, once the egg is cooked from the bottom, flip over and let the top side cook.

5.  When the other side is cooking, spread some Schezwan over the bread. Place cheese slices over it and fold them over like a sandwich. Flip again and cook until the cheese melts.

6.  Serve hot.
do not serve it with ketchup
!

∼

So here I was trying to impress this egg expert who had been around doing his thing for 20 years. Hot and steaming, I brought my classic omelette for him. He politely refused; turned out he was a vegetarian! The person who earned his bread and butter by making eggs had never tasted his own dishes. It made me wonder how strangely this world runs sometimes. My omelette was hungrily snatched up by my director and producer, who rated it on behalf of Khursheed. The verdict:
‘kabil-e-tareef!’
This marked the end of my Dehradun journey. In the middle of the mountains, I found the perfect balance between traditional local cuisine and British cultural heritage that had been left behind for hungry travellers like me. Next stop: Lucknow.

D
AY
75

From the hills, I climbed down for the plains of Lucknow.

D
AY
76

20 October / Lucknow

I was now in Lucknow, 550 km from Dehradun. I had taken a day to reach there, but it felt like I had ‘time-travelled’ to a different period in history. Lucknow resembled an urban version of a city in the Persian Empire—a crossway for merchants, traders, poets, and food lovers to exchange fragments of history. A citadel of Awadhi cuisine, Lucknow was a serious stop on the culinary map. Their traditions date back hundreds of years, and every recipe has an elaborate, often royal, story behind it. Most of Lucknow’s cuisine gets its influence from the Mughals, who spent some time in Persia after their defeat in the Third Battle of Panipat in 1761. The Mughals introduced their own style of cooking, adapted from the experiences in the Persian kingdom. The Nawabs of Awadh, who were the deputies of the Mughals, settled here in Lucknow and evolved this style of cooking further.

There are many heritage strolls that you can take when in Lucknow. However, the only one that I wanted to do was to find authentic Awadhi food. I have friends who make day-trips to Lucknow just to eat. Tunday Kebabi is a shop that has expanded over the 109 years that they have been in business. They serve fresh kebabs on the streets of Aminabad. The old houses, the crowds, and the charm of the
chowk
(in south Asia, an open market area in a city at the junction of two roads) befit this kebab story. The queue to buy a few kebabs usually extends long past the corners of the store. Their latest addition is a small seating area in the basement, which makes it easier to eat if you are not in a hurry. I was more curious about their history and their legacy. I met the third generation of the Tunday Kebabi family, Mr. Muhammad Osman. His grandfather, Mr. Murad Ali, opened this shop many years ago. Being handicapped, Mr. Murad Ali had only one arm, therefore the nick-name Tunday came to be associated with his shop, where he made kebabs with one hand. Osman Bhai told me that his grandfather was the fastest kebab maker there ever was; people with two hands didn’t stand a chance. As if that wasn’t enough, he also revealed that the kebab is claimed to be made with 160 different spices.

Another story goes that there was a nawab who lost all his teeth and commanded his subjects to produce the softest kebab. The person who achieved this feat would have royal patronage for the rest of their life. Mr. Murad Ali created the secret recipe and won that honour. I had a chance to eat a replica of that very same kebab. The story helped build my appetite. I reached for the kebab, which fell apart in my fingers. The kebab couldn’t keep its shape if touched by hand; it was so soft that when you put it in your mouth, it melted away into a warmth of flavours. I could feel the flavours of cardamom, cinnamon, and Panadanas Syrup (
kewra
essence) blossoming in my mouth. The minced meat was ground with fat and spices over and over again until it was so fine that it needed to be held together with a powder of
dal,
nothing synthetic or flavourless like cornflour.

It is the love of spices that rules the kingdom of flavours. Now, as a chef, there was obviously no question about how delicately-made this kebab was. There was a solid reason why it was so popular and that itself vouched for its authenticity. However, even I found it hard to believe that the kebab is made with 160 spices in the recipe. Perhaps it is this myth that adds to its hype and to a slight extent, makes it the legend it is. After eating kebabs for lunch, I decided to wash it down with some liquid marijuana.

Thandai
literally means a cold drink. Often confused with milk, this is made with the liquid of ground dry fruit, water and an array of spices. Once again, I met the fourth generation of Pandit Raja ki Mashoor Thandai. This gentleman had quite a formidable personality. Vinod Kumar Tripathi, a.k.a. Raja, literally meaning king in Hindi, met me at the front of the shop to introduce me to
thandai.
Before we could even begin the conversation, he let me know that the who’s who of the country had been to his shop.
Thandai
could be either made with milk or water. The spices and the
bhang
are added (or not) depending on how you want to spend the rest of the day. For those of you who are of the sober variety,
bhang
is a preparation from the leaves and flowers buds of the cannabis plant, consumed as a beverage in the Indian subcontinent. Basically, you drink your ‘joint’ with milk and spices.

The spice and dry fruit mix that goes into the drink has a few essential components: poppy seeds, saffron, cashew nuts, almond, pistachio, pepper, cardamom and dry fennel. A mortar and pestle are used to grind these spices. It has a small mix of medicinal herbs
(jadi booti)
to give strength to the people who consume the concoction. All these are strained through a muslin cloth while milk or water is passed through to extract their respective flavours. That
is
the secret behind the
thandai.
Mr. Tripathi used a copper mug and a glass to mix the drink and make it frothy; the showmanship involved was a part of the experience!

Roadside eating joints, serving
kulfi falooda
(Indian dessert consisting of a conical-shaped ice cream with rose syrup, vermicelli, psyllium or basil seeds, tapioca pearls and pieces of gelatin with milk or water),
shahi tukda,
and biryani, seemed to crop up after every few metres. I spent the whole day in Aminabad where I even went to a nawab’s house to eat.

D
AY
77

21 October/ Lucknow

I began my day with breakfast that was fit for a king… king of the roads, that is. The breakfast culture is different in each region of India, much like the eating habits and customs. Here in Lucknow, where ‘what to eat’ is an important decision of the day, I stopped at Bajpaiji’s Special Kachori at Hazrat Ganj. Situated in the heart of Lucknow, this is a very popular area for restaurants, bazaars, and handicraft stores.

I ate my breakfast with people staring at me in the market’s busy square. Bajpai
ji
had a special style of making his
kachori,
very typical of the state. It was almost like a cross between a
puri
and a
kachori,
where the outer shell was very crispy, but not hard. This was made possible by adding semolina
(sooji)
to the dough. Unlike a
puri,
it doesn’t balloon up on frying, but still manages not to be flat. In fact, this is optional and is usually made of
dal
and spices. My grandfather is from Uttar Pradesh, so I had set the standard high for Mr. Bajpai.
Kachoris
from this area are my idea of comfort food. I have grown up eating various types of
kachoris,
which also makes it one of my favourite food, ever. The shop was tiny and there were five people huddled inside a room, sitting cross-legged. Their jobs were well defined. One chopped and boiled potatoes, while another kneaded and flattened the dough. One man was only frying the
kachoris
while the other was serving them hot, to the eager customers. The fifth one in the room was collecting cash and taking orders; it was a full-fledged business that successfully ran out of a hole in the wall.

It was chaotic to get to the head of the queue to place an order. The consolation was that the
kachoris
were extremely affordable and once you had eaten them, the rest was forgotten. The regular order size was four
kachoris
in a
pattal
(a cup made of dried leaves) for a reasonable sum of Rs. 20. When I cracked the first
kachori
open, the steam that came out rushed the aroma of the stuffing straight to my nose. It goes without saying that the spices and potato where of very good quality; and their judicious use made the
kachoris
almost delicate. The pickle and raw onions served as accompaniments made for ‘a wholesome experience.’ I couldn’t have been more satisfied.

After Hazrat Ganj I made my way towards
Chawalwaali Gully
(literal translation being ‘the rice street’) in Nakhas. If you thought you would get rice aplenty here, well then, you are wrong! Despite the name, everyone in the gully is in reality, famous for making
sheermal;
hence it is also popular as the
Sheermal Gully.
A Persian word,
mal
is Arabian for material and
sheer
is Persian for milk. It is a sort of rich, sweet, saffron-flavoured bread. It is baked in an Iranian tandoor made of iron and is built into the ground. I went to the oldest
sheermal
shop in Lucknow. It was also the place where the
sheermal
was invented by Mohammadus Jaanashin in 1830. I met his great great grandson, Mohammad Umar of the sixth generation who ran the Ali Hussain Sheermal Shop. I was told that more than 10,000 pieces of
sheermal
were made here every day. He also told me how the taste of the
sheermal
had not changed since the 1830s. It was a little hard to believe, but however, I didn’t waste any time, and went to grab a fresh piece that had just come out of the oven. It was bright orange, and was shaped like a horseshoe. I could taste
desi ghee,
cardamom, dry fruit powder and most of all, saffron, which was bought in all the way from Iran. All these ingredients were mixed with the refined flour while being kneaded. There was also an additional taste that I could not quite put my finger on. I asked Umar who told me that they had a secret ingredient that had been passed down for generations. Even the cooks were not aware of the secret ingredient. The price of the
sheermal
depended on the amount of spices and dry fruits used to make it. On the streets, the
sheermal
was sold for Rs. 10. I found this concept of costing the
sheermal
very interesting. It catered to everyone’s pocket and taste, without compromising on quality. I ate a
sheermal
priced at Rs. 20.

Apart from the
sheermal,
I tasted various other breads that were made here, like the
taftan,
the
bakar-khaani, tabarak,
and
salona kulcha.
The most popular item after the
sheermal
was the
taftan,
which tasted best when had with tea and cream. Now that made me think, ‘What could be best paired with
sheermal?’
I learnt that it was best served with kebabs. I couldn’t resist the opportunity once again to leave my mark and contribute to the shop. I got my production team to set up a makeshift kitchen, to make my own version of the Tunday Kebabi, which I named
Chandan
(Sandalwood)
Ke
Kebab.

C
HANDAN
K
E
 
K
EBAB