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We have a more detailed description of food in Delhi between 1830 and 1857 in Munshi Faizuddin's Bazm-i Aakhir, published in 1885, almost three decades after the upheaval of 1857. He was a middle-level official, a scribe, who has written about the banquets and the royal repasts served in the Red Fort during the reign of the last two Mughal emperors.
They consisted of delicacies that commoners could not dream of. Even poets of aristocratic lineage, with access to the court, lived on meagre stipends that were whimsically granted and withdrawn. With these grants, they could anyway not afford to enjoy the haute-cuisine.
Munshi Faizuddin's elaborate description of the imperial dastarkhan lists dozens of delicacies prepared in the royal kitchen in the Red Fort. He titled his work Bazm-i Aakhir (The Last Banquet) because as such lavish banquets ceased to be hosted after the last Mughal emperor was reduced to a pensioner of the British.
The emperor washed his hands with gram flour and then with a sandalwood tablet. Finger bowls were provided. Pickles, hor d'oeuvres made with almond and pistachio, poppy seeds and aniseeds. Samose salone, aur meethe khajje, Shaakhain. Santare [orange], sharife [custard apple], seb [apple], anar aur ber [pomegranate and jujube].
The breads mentioned are those prepared with wheat and rice flour. Special breads -- cake-like confections incorporating milk and eggs -- were enriched with nuts and dried fruits. Some were leavened while others were not.
Baking, too, could be done in the tandoor or griddle. Many like khamiri, chapattiyan, sheermal, bakarkhani, kulcha, phulkey, paranthe and naan were traditionally cooked in the city by the local bakers, and continue to be so in Delhi till today.
Other, more exotic breads, like gauzaban (literally ox's tongue) and gav deeda (bull's eye) are essentially Lucknow specialties and flakey qatlam belongs to the Kashmiri repertoire.
Other exotic breads were created for the pleasure of the gourmet with slight variations on the original: naan gulzaar (shaped like a flower), badam piste ki naan khatai (a crumbly cookie laced with almonds and pistachios), ghausi(nothing is known about this bread).
Some breads were made with vegetables like carrots, others were sweet in taste and incorporated sugar. Still others were stuffed with lentil paste and called bervi roti. Naan bamba was an exceptionally soft bread.
There was a great variety of rice dishes, mostly pulaos. Yakhni pulao was cooked with mutton or chicken stock, and moti pulao was garnished with pearls crafted of mince and covered with silver leaf.
Raisins went into kishmishi pulao and nargisi pulao mimicked the beauty of iris/daffodil with a garnish of sliced, hard-boiled eggs. Green gram was what gave a distinct identity to boont pulao. Some pulaos were named after a person who may have first ordered these, like the Noor ehal pulao. Pistachios were the essential ingredient for nukti pista pulao.
Biryani pulaos were a separate category. In these pulaos, long-grained rice was first fried delicately to glaze the grains of rice before they were slow-cooked with marinated meats in layers.
The Mughals also relished plain rice dishes like qabuli, cooked with chick-peas, or a khichdi which combined rice and lentils and viands. Tehri was no less popular and it did not have lentils in it. Lots of seasonal vegetables could be added.
Pulao shola continues to be cooked in the bylanes of Delhi, under the name shola khichdi or khichda. It is a rustic dish and its inclusion in the royal dastarkhan indicates that street foods were not kept out of the imperial spread.
Qorma is the term used for braised meats that were cooked without turmeric and had a thick, sauce-like gravy wrapping the meat pieces. Meats were marinated for hours to let the flavours seep in. These were prepared with goat meat, venison (hiran ka qorma) and chicken. Do pyaza is a term used interchangeably in contemporary texts for qorma.
Kaliya was a dish with a thinner gravy that did not always eschew turmeric. Water or milk were added to the meat as it was cooked. Salan incorporated a vegetable in a stew-like preparation.
In the list provided in Bazm-i Aakhir, fish is scarcely mentioned. We do encounter machhcali borani, but no details are available. There are some dishes that are enigmatic like kheere ki dogi.
Unsurprisingly, kebabs were an important part of the Mughal meals. In fact, even the Turko-Afghan sultans, who preceded the Mughals, preferred to make a meal of char-grilled seekh kebabs on skewers.
The list of kebabs provided by Munshi Faizuddin mentions seekh kebabs as well as pan-grilled patties like shami kebabs. These were prepared with beef, mutton, chicken and game-birds like partridges and quails.
Khatai ke kebab are mentioned as a Chinese recipe, but no details are provided. We can only hazard a guess. In Lucknow, there is a delicate crumble-to-touch kebab that bears the name kham khatai ke kebab inspired by nankhatai, which may have been replicated in Delhi. Or this kebab had a touch of some exotic souring agent.
Vegetables were usually cooked with meats, though some vegetables, particularly stuffed ones, were enjoyed on their own. Dulma were dishes that descended from Armenian dolamantes. There was aloo ka dulma, baigan ka dulma, and karelon ka dulma.
There were sweet pulaos -- some cooked with goat meat, muzaffer and muthanjan that were served as desserts. Kheer was commonly prepared with rice and milk, enriched with pistachios and almonds, and made fragrant with saffron. It was also prepared with sevian (vermicelli).
Phirni, a kheer, prepared with rice flour, that had a soufflé-like texture, was set in small clay pots and served cold. Kheer was also prepared with fruits and vegetables like bottle gourd and carrots.
A number of preserves and pickles accompanied the meal. The last royal banquet included murabbas made with karele (bitter gourd), seb( apple), aam(mangoes), baans(bamboo shoots), ananas(pineapple), badam(almonds), kakronde(wild berries), gurhal(hibiscus).
Among the condiments, paneer ki chatniis mentioned. Interestingly, this is the solitary reference to paneer.
Most of the royalty had a sweet tooth and the royal cooks and confectioners created a variety of sweetmeats to cater to it. We have already referred to sweet-tasting pulaos, in addition there was saffron-laced zarda, mildly-sweet yellow rice, and frothy nimish (literally a blink), prepared by delicately collecting layers of froth from milk kept outdoors overnight 'to be chilled by dewdrops and moonlight'.
It is called by different names -- malaiyyo in Benaras, makkhan malai in Kanpur and daulat ki chaat nowadays in Delhi.
Halwa was prepared with a variety of ingredients. Besides semolina, wheat germ, carrots and bottle gourd were used. Papri is mentioned in the list of confections and was most likely a precursor of present day son-papdi derived from the Punjabi patisa.
Gondh ka halwa incorporated edible resin that was believed to have heat generating properties. A laddoo made with gondh continues to be prepared by some halwais during the winter months. More exotic recipes incorporated dried fruits and nuts, meats and eggs.
Lauzaat was the term that covered a variety of dainty sweetmeats that were made with fresh seasonal fruits like jamun, santara and falsa.
Among the many sweets mentioned in Bazm-i Aakhir, there are several that have travelled well across time. Piste ki launji, imarti, jalebi, balu shahi, kalakand, faini, anarse ki goliyan, pethe ki mithai, barfi, moti paak, assorted laddoos -- besan, khoya nariyal, til, and motichoor.
One is tempted to suggest that some sweets with names resembling riddles, like gehun ki baalin ki mithai, made from ears of wheat, was perhaps a variation on the jauzi sohan halwa made in Awadh.
Such elaborate banquets were cooked largely by, and for, the benefit of the hangers-on in the innermost circle of retainers.
Kathal Biryani
Preparation time: 45 minutes
Cooking Time: 1 hour
Serves: 4-6
Ingredients
Method
Excerpted from From The King's Table to Street Food: A Food History of Delhi by Pushpesh Pant, with the permission of the publishers, Speaking Tiger Books.