Discovering secret recipes from the royal kitchens of Nawabs

The most endearing feature of architect-designer Meera Ali's Dining with the Nawabs (Lustre Press/Roli Books) is the slim book of recipes tucked into a pocket inside the satin-covered tome brilliantly illustrated with photographs shot on location by the young and talented Karam Puri.

Inside the book are recipes from the kitchens of the nawabs of ten principalities that got extinguished after Independence. Flipping through the recipes, you realise that the nawabs, at least the more prominent among them who didn't waste away in penury, and whose memories and manners have been kept alive by their descendants, didn't eat very differently from their better-off subjects — or today's upper middle-class —but the aura around them and the expanse of their legendary hospitality did make their dining tables special.

What makes the recipes special, though, is the regional touch that makes each one of them different. The recipes from the kitchen of the Nawab of Arcot, whose family once ruled a corner of the northern end of today's Tamil Nadu, and who ranks 15th in the Line of Protocol after the President of India (he's the only former royal who can officially flaunt the titular title of "Prince"), for instance, include those of Pudum (minced mutton patties stuffed with eggs), Keema Bhare Lal Baingan (tomatoes stuffed with minced mutton), Ande Ka Meetha (sweetened egg fudge), and the mutton biryani that the principality has traditionally been famous for.

The use of the term "lal baingan" for tomatoes, incidentally, is not inaccurate at all, for both tomatoes and eggplant are related to each other because they belong to the nightshade family of flowering plants.

From the other side of the border, Bahawalpur, whose present Nawab, Salah-ud-din Mohammad Khan, is a member of Pakistan's National Assembly and a political ally of former cricketer Imran Khan, is represented by a regional dish named Baata Gosht, or mutton cooked with baata flowers found in the Cholistan desert, where the family's Derawar Fort is located.

The other dishes from the nawab's table include Matha (coal-smoked brinjal cooked with yoghurt), Ashrafi Pulao (made with meatballs), Chana Dal Halwa and Pethey (white pumpkin) Ki Kheer. These are commonplace dishes, but they acquire blue-blooded status because of the kitchens they come from.

The favourite of the nawabs of Khairpur, a principality on the Indus river in Sind, Pakistan, which was one of the old Rajputana states, is the humble mutton cooked with drumsticks. You can't get more humble than that.

Of course, there's a touch of the exotic in Meethe Kofte (meatballs sweetened with plum and mango chutneys) and the sweet Badam Roti made with almonds, cold milk, butter and powdered sugar. Back in India, from the little-known speck of land called Zainabad in the Rann of Kutch we are treated to robust local specialities such as Jild Gosht, or mutton wrapped in the skin of goat and cooked underground with coals burning over it.

Hara Chana, or green chickpeas cooked with brinjal, is another local delicacy, which when served in the fields where the chickpeas grow acquire an aura of their own. And from Kamadhia, in the Kathiawar peninsula of Gujarat, we are served Dumpukht (chicken cooked with dry fruit), Hare Masale Ki Chamna (pomfret cooked in green masala), Surati Nawabi Biryani cooked on charcoal, and Muzaffari Shola, a desert made with rice and pineapple.

The book owes its richness and depth to the travels undertaken by Meera Ali and Karam Puri to parts of India and Pakistan we scarcely knew about. Bahawalpur, for me, has forever been synonymous with Bahawalpur House in New Delhi. Little did I know about its political and culinary legacy.

The beauty of the book, beyond its stunning pictures, lies in the discoveries waiting to be made in each of its stunner pages.

(Courtesy of Mail Today.)

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