Cooking and serving food in the royal kitchens was a riot of colours, fragrances, experiments, table manners and protocols. The emperors usually ate with their queens and concubines, except on festive occasions, when they dined with nobles and courtiers. Daily meals were usually served by eunuchs, but an elaborate chain of command accompanied the food to the table. The hakim (royal physician) planned the menu, making sure to include medicinally beneficial ingredients. For instance, each grain of rice for the pulao was coated with silver warq, which aided digestion and acted as an aphrodisiac. One account records a Mughal banquet given by Asaf Khan, the emperor’s wazir, during Jahangir’s time to Shah Jahan — though no outsider had ever seen any emperor while dining except once when Friar Sebastian Manriquea, a Portuguese priest, was smuggled by an eunuch inside the harem to watch Shah Jahan eat his food with Asaf Khan...
The emperor began and ended his meal with prayers; the banquet ran for hours as Shah Jahan liked to enjoy his food, spending long hours at dastarkhwan... Like his ancestors, Shah Jahan also enjoyed fresh fruits. The Mughals gave India a variety of fruits like cherries, apricots, grapes and melons, but their love for mangoes was unbeatable. Shah Jahan liked to weigh fruits in front of him and once became angry when one of his sons instead of sending mangoes from his favourite tree in Deccan had eaten all. Shah Jahan’s love for mangoes made the imperial kitchens prepare imaginative recipes of qaliya and pulao...
A lover of aesthetics, Shah Jahan’s kitchen was an exhibition ground of boundless creative energy and finesse. There are two manuscripts, Alwan-e-Nemat (Bounties of the Table) — written during Jahangir’s time — now in the collection of the National Museum in New Delhi, and Nuskha-e-Shahjahani, in the British Library in London, that talk about Shah Jahan’s kitchen. A copy of Nuskha-e-Shahjahani is also available in the Government Oriental Manuscript Library, Chennai... This volume is a translation of the Persian text of the manuscript, with no changes made with regard to the measures mentioned in the original text. — Excerpted with permission from the publisher
Food fit for royalty
AASH-E-NAKHUDI
(Thick sweetened lamb and vegetable soup)
Serves: 8-10
Ingredients
- Lamb, cut into medium-sized pieces 2 kg
- Ghee 2 cups
- Onions, sliced 2 cups
- Salt to taste
- Ginger, chopped 8 tsp
- Beetroots, cut into cubes 1 cup
- Carrots, cut into cubes 100 gm
- Turnips, cut into cubes 1 cup
- Cloves ½ tsp
- Egg white 1
- Sugar 3 cups
- Juice of lemons 3
- Coriander seeds, pounded 8 tsp
- Almonds, fried, ground to paste 5 tsp
- Rice paste 8 tsp
- Cinnamon, ground ½ tsp
- Green cardamoms, ground ½ tsp
- Black peppercorns, ground 2 tsp
- Spinach ½ cup
- Dill ½ bunch
- Saffron ½ tsp
Method
- Heat the ghee in a pan; add the onions and fry until golden. Add half the lamb pieces, salt and ginger. Fry until the lamb changes colour. Add water to partly cook the lamb.
- Add beetroots, carrots, turnips and 3 cups water. Cook on low heat.
- When lamb and vegetables are cooked and 1½ cups water remain in the pan, separate the lamb and veggies from the stock and reserve. Strain the stock and temper it with 2 cloves; keep aside.
- Mince the remaining lamb pieces. Make a dry do-piyazah with the mince and grind to a fine paste. Add white of egg and knead into a dough. Make marble-sized balls of this mix and deep-fry in hot oil.
- Make a sugar syrup of one-string consistency with lemon juice. Add half of the syrup to the reserved stock. Boil.
- Add pounded coriander seeds, almond paste and rice paste to the stock; mix.
- Sprinkle ground cinnamon, cloves, cardamom and black pepper; mix. Add the spinach, dill and lamb pieces; bring to a soft boil and remove from heat.
- Transfer into serving bowl. Add rest of the syrup to the soup. Garnish with saffron.
ZEER BIRYAN PANEER
(Rice with cottage cheese and green gram)
Serves: 6-8
Ingredients
- Rice 4 cups
- Cottage cheese, cut into ¾ cubes 1 cup
- Wholewheat flour 8 tsp
- Salt 8 tsp
- Yoghurt, hung, whisked ½ cup
- Saffron, dissolved in water 1.5 gm
- Green cardamoms, crushed ½ tsp
- Onions, slices ½ cup
- Ginger, chopped 4 tsp
- Cinnamon ½ tsp
- Cloves ½ tsp
- Black peppercorns, ground 1.5 gm
- Ghee 1½ cups
- Green gram, fresh ½ cup
- Flat bamboo sticks as needed
Method
- Mix the wheat flour and salt with water in a bowl and make a thick batter. Cover the cheese with this batter and deep-fry until golden brown. Keep aside.
- Mix the whisked yoghurt with the saffron and half of the finely crushed cardamom seeds; apply this mixture over the fried cottage cheese pieces.
- Take a pan; arrange flat bamboo sticks in a criss-cross way in its bottom.
- Remove the cheese from the yoghurt mix and place them over the bamboo sticks. Place the onion slices along with ginger, cinnamon, cloves, ground pepper, and ¾ cup ghee over the cheese pieces.
- Parboil the rice and spread it over the cottage cheese pieces. If the rice is a little hard, sprinkle 2 tbsp water to make it soft. Colour some rice with saffron and put on one side of the pan.
- Spread the green gram over the rice.
- Heat ¾ cup ghee to smoking point and pour over the rice. Place 1 cup wheat flour on top of rice, cover & seal the pan.
- Place live charcoal on the cover of the pan and put on dum for 5 minutes.
AMBA PULAO
(Sweet and tangy mango lamb rice)
Serves: 6-8
Ingredients
- Lamb, cut into pieces 1 kg
- Rice 4 cups
- Ghee 1 cup
- Onions, sliced 1 cup
- Ginger, chopped 4 tsp
- Coriander seeds, crushed 4 tsp
- Salt 4 tsp
- Cloves 1 tsp
- Raw mangoes 1 kg
- Sugar 3 cups
- Cumin seeds 2 gm
- Black peppercorns 1 tsp
- Cinnamon, 2 sticks
- Pistachios, fried ½ cup
- Almonds, fried ½ cup
- Raisins, fried ½ cup
Method
- Make yakhni with the lamb pieces, ghee, onions, ginger, crushed coriander seeds and salt. Strain the stock and separate the lamb pieces.
- Add half the mangoes to the stock, and cook until tender. Remove from heat and keep aside to cool. Squeeze mangoes with hands to extract thick pulp. Strain.
- Make sugar syrup (one-string consistency).
- Cut rest of the mangoes, boil in water and then float in this syrup; cook until tender. Remove from syrup; keep aside.
- Add the syrup to the mango stock and parboil the rice in it.
- In a separate pan, spread the cumin seeds, followed by the lamb pieces. Add the whole spices and 2 tbsp sweet stock; cook on low heat until syrup is absorbed.
- Spread the rice over the lamb, pour some ghee and cook on dum
- Arrange the mango pieces on the pulao and garnish with fried dry fruits to serve.
GURAK KABAB
(Chicken stuffed with meat and slow-cooked on cinnamon bed)
Serves: 4
Ingredients
- Chicken, cleaned, 2 (700-800 gm each) washed, skinned
- Onion juice ½ cup
- Ginger juice ¼ cup
- Salt to taste
- Vegetable oil 3 tbsp
- Lamb, minced 400 gm
- Onion, medium-sized, sliced 1
- Coriander seeds, crushed 1 tbsp
- Ginger, chopped 1 tbsp
- Saffron, dissolved in milk 1.5 gm
- Yoghurt, whisked ¼ cup
- Cinnamon sticks 8-10
- Ghee ½ cup
- Black gram flour ½ cup
- Clove powder 1 tsp
- Cardamom powder 1 tsp
- Pepper powder 1 tsp
Method
- Prick the chicken all over with a fork.
- Marinate for 30 minutes the chicken with onion juice, ginger juice and salt; rub well inside and outside the chicken.
- Heat oil in a pan; add the minced meat, onion, crushed coriander seeds, ginger and salt. Cook until the meat is tender.
- Smoke the cooked mixture.
- Fill the chicken with the mince and tie its legs with twine to keep its shape intact.
- Mix saffron and ground spices with yoghurt. Apply it over the chicken.
- Spread cinnamon sticks over a pan. Place chicken over it and pour ghee around.
- Make a semi-hard dough of black gram flour. Cover the pan and seal with this dough.
- Place the pan on low charcoal heat and cook on dum for 4 hours.
- Remove the cover, take the chicken out, cut into four pieces and serve over the mince.