Chicken Malai Image Used Under Creative Commons License From pinterest.com

Citizens, we are in the home stretch of our week of Indian recipes, and this 5th one is representative of my favorite food-style of India – the mighty and complex Awadhi cuisine of the city of Lucknow! 😀

Awadhi cuisine (Hindi: अवधी भोजन, Urdu: اودھی کھانا‬‎) is a cuisine native to the city of Lucknow, which is the capital of the state of Uttar Pradesh in Northern India.It is very closely related to Bhojpuri cuisine of its neighboring region, Bhojpur.

The cooking patterns of Lucknow are similar to those of Central Asia, the Middle East, and Northern India with the cuisine comprising both vegetarian and non-vegetarian dishes. The Awadh region has been greatly influenced by Mughal cooking techniques, and the cuisine of Lucknow bears similarities to those of Central Asia, Kashmir, Punjab and Hyderabad. The city is also known for its Nawabi foods.

The bawarchis (chefs) and rakabdars (gourmet cooks) of Awadh invented the dum style of cooking or the art of cooking over a slow fire, which has become synonymous with Lucknow today. Their spreads consisted of elaborate dishes such as kebabs, kormas, biryanis, kaliyas, nahari-kulchas, zarda, sheermal, roomali rotis, and warqi parathas. The richness of Awadh cuisine lies not only in the variety of cuisine but also in the ingredients used like mutton, paneer, and rich spices, which include cardamom and saffron.

As noted on greatbritishchefs.com:

Awadhi cuisine is a bit of an unknown in Britain, despite being the basis for many of our favourite Indian takeaway staples. Seekh kebabs, biryanis and kormas are all legendary Awadhi dishes, which are regarded as some of the best in India. The cuisine comes from Lucknow, a city in the north of India, but has spread across the country thanks to its aromatic flavours and unique cooking techniques.

To find out more I sat down with Shoeb Haider, the head chef of Awadhi restaurant Zaika, in Kensington. Shoeb grew up in Lucknow and had never cooked using gas or electric until he went to Mumbai when he was twenty-two. Now he works in London, recreating the dishes of Lucknow and sticking close to tradition. It’s the kebabs and biryanis that the restaurant has become famous for, proving that the dishes we often take for granted in the UK have some serious history, technique and skill behind them.

Chef Shoeb grew up eating Awadhi cuisine in Lucknow, before moving to Mumbai and eventually London. ‘Awadhi cuisine is all about slow-cooking, known as dum in India, much of which is done in the tandoor,’ explains Shoeb. ‘This brings out amazing flavours and textures, which when combined with the rich, perfumed flavours from the spices create one of the best cuisines in the world. About ninety percent of all Indian kebabs are Awadhi, and it is the home of korma and biryani. Everything is cooked over charcoal – not just the kebabs, but all Awadhi dishes. The food isn’t as ‘showy’ as cuisines found in other parts of India – the biryani, for example, looks quite plain, but the texture and taste is just incredible.’

This slow cooking helps to meld flavours together to create something totally unique, but it’s the rich, indulgent spices that really set Awadhi cuisine apart. ‘Awadhi cuisine is very rich, with lots of nuts, cream and ghee, but in the olden days that was fine because people did a lot of physical work,’ says Shoeb. ‘Now it should be regarded as a treat; even though it might look simple, the second you taste it you will realise just how special it is.’

To truly understand the food of Lucknow and Awadhi cuisine in general, we have to go back to the time of the Mughal Empire, which in the early eighteenth century ruled over nearly a quarter of the world’s population and conquered vast swathes of India. It was in places like Lucknow that the Mughals introduced their own food culture, which in turn shaped India’s cuisine.

‘Dum cooking originated in Awadhi because of the Mughals, who ruled the area around Lucknow at the time,’ says Shoeb. ‘They used to fight many wars, so needed a way of cooking food that worked around that. By digging a hole in the morning and slowly cooking food in it, they could go to battle and then return to eat. Dum cooking also preserved meat for longer, which was handy for armies on the move.’

At first, Awadhi cuisine was only ever eaten by royalty or the guests of Mughal kings who wanted to show off their wealth. They’d do this by serving lots of richly flavoured food covered in gold and silver leaf (especially biryanis, which were full of expensive ingredients like saffron). Back then cooks would keep their methods very secret to ensure no other chef could steal their methods, which meant if someone wanted to taste Awadhi cuisine for themselves, they had to travel to Lucknow.

‘Even today, some chefs in Lucknow won’t share their recipes or methods,’ adds Shoeb. ‘India has changed so much but there are still small towns or areas where nothing has changed for one hundred years. That’s where a lot of India’s top chefs come from, or at the very least they will have trained there.’

It takes an Awadhi chef a long time to properly master how to cook dum-style, but it takes even longer to understand how to correctly use spices. ‘Understanding how to select, toast and blend the spices together to create a proper Awadhi flavour is much harder than it sounds,’ says Shoeb. ‘Many of them are sharp or sweet, so the balance is very important. There are easily fifty spices used regularly in the cuisine, but in total it’s more like 150. The most common are cinnamon, saffron, green cardamom and mace, but other aromatics like rosewater are also popular. And while you might see a cardamom pod in your dish, you’ll never be able to taste it – the aim is to combine the spices in such a way that they create a single, unique flavour that tastes amazing.’

There are dozens of Awadhi dishes that are famous throughout India, but in the UK the most popular are the kebabs and biryanis. We tend to think of kebabs as anything cooked on a skewer and a biryani as a curry with rice mixed in, but this is an incredibly simplified way of looking at things. In Lucknow, kebabs come in all shapes and sizes with fiercely guarded recipes for the spice blends that flavour them. ‘

The most famous Awadhi kebab is the seekh kebab, but there’s also kakori, which is a lamb kebab that melts in your mouth, and shami, a combination of lamb and chickpeas which was traditionally only made in the evening for men as they came home from work,’ says Shoeb. ‘Some are left fibrous, others like the shami are ground down to a very fine paste before being mixed with the spices (a method known as bawarchi) – legend has it that this was so Nawabs (Mughal rulers) who had lost their teeth were able to still eat meat.’

Despite the biryani being one of Lucknow’s most famous culinary exports, the staple of the region is actually wheat. ‘Breads are very important in Awadhi cuisine even though both rice and wheat grow in the area. All the different breads like parathas, naans and sheermals (a sweet, saffron-flavoured flatbread) are cooked in the tandoor and tend to take a long time, as you need to leave the dough to ferment the night before.’

As you can see, many of us have been enjoying the tastes and textures of Awadhi cuisine for years without even realising it. The gentle heat of the charcoal tandoor combined with rich spices and a tendency to add cream or ghee to sauces makes it incredibly luxurious and an instant hit the world over. But it’s only when you go to somewhere like Zaika and talk to a chef like Shoeb that you realise just how highly regarded the cuisine is, and how hard it can be to master. As you can imagine, the food itself is a world away from the typical high street Indian takeaway as it’s cooked using quality produce and to traditional methods, but it’s fascinating to see just how influential Awadhi cuisine is for Indian chefs in both the UK and abroad.

Although not typically served this way, I have chosen to use a unique Awadhi technique in this recipe, known as Dhungar.

This is a quick smoke procedure, where smoke is used to flavor a meat dish, dals (lentils) or even raita (whipped yogurt). The smoke permeates the ingredients and imparts a subtle aroma that enhances the quality of dish.

In this method, a shallow utensil or lagan is used in which meat or mince is marinated. A small area is made at the center of the dish and a pan (betel) leaf, onion skin, clay bowl or just a small steel katori (bowl) is placed. In it a piece of live burning coal is placed and then melted ghee (clarified butter) is poured over the burning coal to create smoke, also sometimes ghee is mixed with aromatic herbs or spices, the moment it smokes a lid is placed on the utensil, covering it with towel to further prevent the escape of smoke.

After some time, the coal is removed from the utensil and the dish is put through further cooking processes as required.

I have chosen to flavor my ghee for this technique with a heretical herb rarely used in Indian cooking, but one that works really well to aromatize this dish: oil of wild oregano! You can leave the oregano out for the classic Dhungar ghee technique.

You can purchase oil of wild oregano here, dried rose petals here, Kashmiri chili powder here, coconut milk powder here, black cardamom here, and dried methi leaves here.

Battle on – The Generalissimo

Hyderabad Chicken Biryani Recipe Image Used Under Creative Commons License From thedeliciouscrescent.com

My Citizens! The undimmed light in the East – the jeweled radiance who ALONE is TFD! – is pleased to share with you recipe #4 in our week of Indian delights, this one from the great city of Hyderabad!

Established in 1591 by Muhammad Quli Qutb Shah, Hyderabad remained under the rule of the Qutb Shahi dynasty for nearly a century before the Mughals captured the region. In 1724, Mughal viceroy Asif Jah I declared his sovereignty and created his own dynasty, known as the Nizams of Hyderabad.

The Nizam’s dominions became a princely state during the British Raj, and remained so for 150 years, with the city serving as its capital. The city continued as the capital of Hyderabad State after it was brought into the Indian Union in 1948, and became the capital of Andhra Pradesh after the States Reorganisation Act, 1956.

Since 1956, Rashtrapati Nilayam in the city has been the winter office of the President of India. In 2014, the newly formed state of Telangana split from Andhra Pradesh and the city became the joint capital of the two states, a transitional arrangement scheduled to end by 2025.

Relics of Qutb Shahi and Nizam rule remain visible today; the Charminar—commissioned by Muhammad Quli Qutb Shah—has come to symbolise Hyderabad. Golconda fort is another major landmark. The influence of Mughlai culture is also evident in the region’s distinctive cuisine, which includes Hyderabadi biryani and Hyderabadi haleem.

The Qutb Shahis and Nizams established Hyderabad as a cultural hub, attracting men of letters from different parts of the world. Hyderabad emerged as the foremost center of culture in India with the decline of the Mughal Empire in the mid-19th century, with artists migrating to the city from the rest of the Indian subcontinent. The Telugu film industry based in the city is the country’s second-largest producer of motion pictures.

Hyderabad was historically known as a pearl and diamond trading center, and it continues to be known as the “City of Pearls”. Many of the city’s traditional bazaars remain open, including Laad Bazaar, Begum Bazaar and Sultan Bazaar.

As for the glory that is biryani, it is a mixed rice dish with its origins among the Muslims of the Indian subcontinent. It is popular throughout the Indian subcontinent as well as among the diaspora from the region. It is made with Indian spices, rice, meat (chicken, goat, beef, prawn, or fish), vegetables or eggs.

Biryani is a Hindustani word derived from the Persian language, which was used as an official language in different parts of medieval India by various Islamic dynasties. One theory is that it originates from birinj, the Persian word for rice. Another is that it derives from biryan or beriyan, which is to fry or to roast.

The exact origin of the dish is uncertain. In North India, different varieties of biryani developed in the Muslim centers of Delhi (Mughlai cuisine), Lucknow (Awadhi cuisine) and other small principalities. In South India, where rice is more widely used as a staple food, several distinct varieties of biryani emerged from Telangana (specifically Hyderabad), Tamil Nadu (Ambur), Kerala (Malabar), and Karnataka, where minority Muslim communities were present.

Andhra is the only region of South India that does not have many native varieties of biryani. During the Safavid dynasty (1501–1736) in Persia, a dish called Berian Pilao (Nastaliq script: بریان پلو‬) was made with lamb or chicken, marinated overnight — with dahi, herbs, spices, dried fruits (e.g., raisins, prunes, or pomegranate seeds) — and later cooked in a tannour oven. It was then served with steamed rice.

According to historian Lizzie Collingham, the modern biryani developed in the royal kitchens of the Mughal Empire (1526–1857), as a confluence of the native spicy rice dishes of India and the Persian pilaf. Indian restaurateur Kris Dhillon believes that the dish originated in Persia, and was brought to India by the Mughals. However, another theory claims that the dish was known in India before the first Mughal emperor Babur came to India.

The 16th-century Mughal text Ain-i-Akbari makes no distinction between biryanis and pilaf (or pulao): it states that the word “biryani” is of older usage in India. A similar theory, that biryani came to India with Timur’s invasion, appears to be incorrect, because there is no record of biryani having existed in his native land during that period.

My version of this classic recipe is traditional in the extreme, and uses the classic dum method of cooking.

Dum means to ‘breathe in’ and pukht means to ‘cook.’ Dum pukht cooking uses a round, heavy-bottomed pot, preferably a handi (clay pot), in which food is sealed and cooked over a slow fire. The two main aspects to this style of cooking are: bhunao and dum, or ‘roasting’ and ‘maturing’ of a prepared dish.

In this cuisine, herbs and spices are important. The process of slow roasting gently allows each to release their maximum flavor. The sealing of the lid of the handi with dough achieves maturing. Cooking slowly in its juices, the food retains its natural aromas.

In some cases, cooking dough is spread over the container, like a lid, to seal the foods; this is known as pardah (veil). Upon cooking, it becomes a bread which has absorbed the flavors of the food. The bread is usually eaten with the dish. In the end, dum pukht food is about aroma when the seal is broken on the table and the fragrance of a Persian repast floats in the air.

Redolent of rare spices, flower essences and the history of the Emperors of old, I hope you will enjoy this dish of dishes, Citizens! 🙂 You can buy culinary-grade Bulgarian rose essence (the best in the world!) here black cumin seeds here and kewra water here.

Battle on – The Generalissimo