Kebab ki Kahani - Understanding Avadhi Cuisine and What Makes it Special

Regional food in India has been seeing its own Renaissance. But despite the fact that there is an increased interest on the part of both consumers and chefs to delve into pan-Indian cuisines, it is a fact that we know very little about most of them. Case in point is 'Avadhi food', which has been in the commercial domain for a while, yet it remains somewhat of a mystery. We may love to indulge in a kakori kebab, have wedding counters full of food from the region and we may rave about Lucknow as one of the culinary capitals of India, but do we really understand what Avadhi food is all about? What makes its qormas, biryanisand kebab distinctive? And what really are the nuances that make this food completely different from other 'courtly cuisines' in other parts of the country?But first, just the term 'Avadhi'. What is much of UP, Uttar Pradesh, the heart of the Indo-Gangetic plain, was christened by the British as the "United Provinces of Agra and Oudh". 'Oudh' or Avadh, with its capital in Faizabad was an important Mughal outpost with considerable territory and cultural dominance. Agra, of course, became the seat of the empire, while Avadh came under the rule of Mughal subsidiaries, the Shia Nawabs from Nishapur, Iran, post the Maratha battles, in the 18th century.As Avadh grew in importance, a distinct, refined courtly culture developed, influenced by the sophistication of the Persians, but equally an outcome of what we now call the Indo-Islamic culture of India-our Ganga-Jamuna tehzeeb. Hindu and Muslim influences, usually upper-class because this is where most of the social courtly mingling also occurred, came together to foster a highly stylized culture. It was but natural that one of the outcomes of this formal, sophisticated culture was also a stylized cuisine, marked by the dexterity and inventiveness of cooks and the hyperbolic lavishness of plates. Food played an important role in diplomacy, with the cooks of the nawabs creating newer dishes from older Mughal ones, not merely to impress their patrons (the Muslim nobility as well as the Kayastha administrators) but also the British residents and visitors from other princely states who had to be entertained.When we talk of Avadhi food today, essentially Nawabi food from Avadh (though the broader term may as well include the food of other communities that lived in the province) there is no one perhaps better placed than Chef Gulam Qureshi to talk about the nuances. Chef Qureshi heads Dum Pukht at ITC Maurya, the most popular restaurant, recently turned 25 years old, to serve exclusively Avadhi-style food in the country. He belongs to the Qureshi family, whose members are now spread all over the Indian restaurant kitchens, after Imtiaz Qureshi (Chef Gulam's father-in-law) made the transition from being a caterer in Lucknow (the family, whose traditional occupation was butchery had turned to catering) to five-star hospitality in Delhi.
 But Chef Gulam is of a generation that still recalls the rigorous work involved in cooking for large numbers. He can give you the exact number of rotis, for instance, that 10 kg of wheat flour will produce. Over the years, each time I have mentioned La Martiniere, my own alma mater, to him, Chef Gulam has looked back nostalgically at his days spent as an apprentice cook with his father and uncle in Lucknow-rolling out rotis for the La Martiniere canteen! Each roti (what we call the roomali, made to go with kebab) had to be perfectly thin, else the tightly-controlled quantity of flour would not be sufficient. Perfect training for a restaurant, as it were.Avadhi food, is, of course, far more than roti and boti (bread and meat). Many of the fabulous qormas that we associate with the cuisine display a very sophisticated sense of spicing, which makes the cuisine at once distinctive from other similar cuisines. Rampur and Lucknow may not be geographically far apart, but their cuisines are distinctive because the Afghan-influenced cooking of Rampur is much "rougher" in its use of whole spices than the inherent sophistication of Lucknow. Overpowering flavours are not used in Avadhi courtly food; instead a balance of flavours is achieved by intricately combining different types of spices. "Garlic, for instance, is never used in any dish where we use saffron," points out Gulam. The pungency of the ingredient kills any subtlety of other spices. So Avadhi chefs will, or should, always work with separate ginger and garlic pastes, freshly made, using garlic much more infrequently in their creations than ginger.