The Awadhi/Lucknow dastarkhwan would not be complete unless it had the
following dishes.
- Qorma (braised meat in thick gravy),
- salan (a gravy dish of meat or vegetable),
- qeema (minced meat),
- kababs (pounded meat fried or roasted over a charcoal fire),
- food coloring
- lamb
- pasinda (fried slivers of very tender meat, usually kid, in gravy)
- fresh cake mix
- Rice is cooked with meat in the form of a pulao,Chulao (fried rice) or served plain.
There would also be a variety of rotis.
Desserts comprise
kheer (milk sweetened and boiled with whole
rice to a thick consistency),
sheer brunj, (a rich, sweet rice dish boiled
in milk),firni
The menu changes with the seasons and with the festival that marks the
month. The severity of winters is fought with rich food. Paye (trotters) are cooked overnight over a slow fire and the shorba (thick gravy)
eaten with naans. Turnips are also cooked overnight
with meat koftas and kidneys and had for lunch. This dish is called shab
degh and a very popular in Lucknow. The former taluqdar of Jeghangirdar would serve it to his friends on several occasions during winter.
Birds like Partridge and quail are had from the advent of winter since they are heat giving meats. Fish is relished from the advent of winter till spring. It is avoided in the
rainy season. In Awadh river fish are preferred particularly rahu (Crap), fish kababs (cooked in mustard oil) are preferred.
peas are the most sought after
vegetable in Awadh. One can spot peas in salan, qeema, pulao or just fried
plain.
Spring (Sawan) is celebrated with pakwan (crisp snacks), phulkis
(besan pakoras in salan), puri-kababs and birahis (paratha stuffed with mashed
dal) khandoi (steamed balls of dal in a salan), laute paute (gram flour
pancakes—rolled, sliced, and served in a salan), and colocasia-leaf cutlets served with salan add variety. In summer, raw mangoes
cooked in semolina and jaggery or sugar, make a dessert called curamba. These dishes come from the rural Hindu
population of Awadh.
Activity in the kitchen increases with the approach of festivals. During
Ramzan, the month of fasting, the
cooks and women of the house are busy throughout the day preparing the iftari
(the meal eaten at the end of the day’s fast), not only for the family but for
friends and the poor. Id is celebrated with varieties of siwaiyan (vermicelli). Muzzaffar is a favourite in Lucknow. Shab-e-barat is looked forward
to for its halwas, particularly of semolina and gram flour. Khichra or haleem,
a mixture of dals, wheat and meat, cooked together, is had during Muharm, since it signifies a sad state of mind.
Some dishes appear and disappear from the Lucknow dastarkhwan
seasonally, and others are a permanent feature, like qorma, chapatti, and
roomali roti. The test of a good chapatti is that you should be able to see the
sky through it. The dough should be very loose and is left in a lagan (deep
broad vessel) filled with water for half an hour before the chapattis are made.
Sheermals were invented by mamdoo bawarchi more than one and a half
century ago. They are saffron covered parathas made from a dough of flour mixed
with milk and ghee and baked in iron tandoors. No other city produces sheermals
like Lucknow does and the festive dastarkhwan is not complete without it.
Saffron is used to flavour sweets too.
Utensils are made of iron or copper. Meat kababs are cooked in a mahi
tawa (large, round shallow pan), using a kafgir—a flat, long handled ladle—to
turning kababs and parathas. Bone china plates and dishes have been used in
Lucknow since the time of Nawabs. Water was normally sipped from copper or
silver kato ras and not glasses. The seating arrangement, while eating was
always on the floor where beautifully embroidered dastarkhwans were spread on
dares and chandnis (white sheets). Sometimes this arrangement was made on a
takht or low wide wooden table.
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