Awadhi Cuisine - Awadhi Dastarkhwan

Awadhi Dastarkhwan

Dastarkhwan, a Persian term, literally means a meticulously laid-out ceremonial dining spread. It is customary in Awadh to sit around and share the Dastarkhwan. Laden with the finest and the most varied repertoire of the khansamas (chefs), the Dastarkhwan of the raeis (the rich) were called Khasa (special).

The richness of Awadhi cuisine lies not only in the variety of cuisine but also is the ingredients used in creating such a variety. The Chefs of Awadhi transformed the traditional dastarkhwan with elaborate dishes like kababs, kormas, kaliya, nahari-kulchas, zarda, sheermal, roomali rotis, and parathas.

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 colouring
• lamb
• pasinda (fried slivers of very tender meat, usually kid, in gravy)
• fresh cake mix
• Rice is cooked with meat in the form 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 Jehangirabad 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 (carp), 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 Muharram, 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.