Biryaani, Kebab and Aloo Kachauri
India has a lot many regional cuisines where the dishes prepared are age-old recipes that are native to the land. This article is to explore in greater detail the cuisine of Uttar Pradesh. The thelas, dhabaas, road side hawkers selling chaat, paani – puri, puri – aloo or kachauris are all the part of street food cuisine! The main cities are Lucknow, Benaras, Kanpur, Bareilly, Agra, Mathura and Allahabad. Each city has a well-known speciality of its own. However, the Awadhi Cuisine can be broadly divided into two: first being Mughlai; when the Mughal rulers came to UP in the medieval times, they made Lucknow their bastion and greatly influenced the food along with the architecture. The second being the native vegetarian cuisine like in Benaras.
Lucknow is famous for its Awadhi food and its Mughalai style of cooking in some places. Lucknowi mutton biryani, Tunde’s Kebaab served with green chutney are famous for their rich aroma and spiced meat. Interestingly, like all other things, the history of the place also plays an impactful role in the cuisines of different places. Lucknow was always centric to the Mughal rule and was the seat for all the Awadh accomplices of the Mughals and the British later. Mughlai food specialities are seen in the style of cooking Lucknowi food.
Mutton Biryani is an example of the Mughlai influence on food in Lucknow. Interestingly, biryani was a development in Lucknow during the building of the famous Imaam Bara , when the masons boiled their meat in rice and ate as a staple food item. The Nawab was impressed by this dish and asked the royal cook to make a refined version of the biryani that the labourers were eating. Hence, the biryani prepared for the Nawab was infused with aromatic herbs and spices and so biryani as a dish was royally recognized and widely eaten in Lucknow. Considering the fact that biryani was patronised by the royalty of Lucknow, its preparation method requires a liberal amount of time for it is slowly cooked in order to infuse the rice and meat with the aroma of the spices and herbs. Various Indian spices such as coriander, red chilli, clove, mint, etc go into the recipe. Cooked in a thick paste of finely chopped sour tomatoes and onion and other vegetables of choice, the wait is till the rice turns a glorious golden and the meat is tender and juicy. Basmati rice is an important requisite for biryani, and is cooked by a method called ‘the layering method’ wherein, the rice and meat are placed in layers between different spices and heated slowly. Other than this, Lucknow is also very famous for its sweet dish gajjak. It is a dried sweet made of ‘til’ or sesame seeds made using either jaggery (Gur) or caramel.
Similarly, cities such as Benaras, have varying food palettes too. Considering Benaras’s history as a holy city for Hindus, the food is largely what is called saatvik or plain vegetarian. Benaras is very famous for its kachauri and ‘aloo sabzi’. If you walk out in the streets of the city, you can occasionally spot men and women flocking road-side tea and kachauri stalls. It is a common sight to see people with their steaming cups of tea and kachauri in hand, sitting by the ghats coming together in small gatherings, discussing their everyday lives adding spice, salt and sugar only from the kachauri and tea at hand. Another food item of both fame and shame in Benaras is the paan. Locals love their paan but unfortunately, it’s also a plague for the roads and the monuments of the city. It doesn’t fail to amaze me how intricately our lives are linked with not just the food we eat, but the kind of it and the style of it too.
Some food items that are common throughout the state are samosas, jalebi, kulfi, chai with malaai, laddoo, pede, kaju barfi, etc. These can be counted as the ‘essentials’ in every U.P walas weekly indulgences. This food is more than a requirement to the people of the state, it is their necessity! No family gathering can be complete without samosas and jalebi. There will always be at least one “samose-vala” in every locality. The fact that this food are mediums of getting people together adds all the more taste to them.
Uttar Pradesh is in no way behind on the dessert menu either. Various cities are famous all over for their spectacular sweet preparations as well. To name some, there is pethaa from Agra, peda from Mathura and other like imarti, balushahi and many more. Even the smallest food item comes with a historical background. Ghewar, for example, is a sweet treat made across Uttar Pradesh, particularly in Meerut and Muzaffarnagar in the Monsoon season. The Hindu women celebrate their festival of ‘Teej’ and ghewar is the opening dessert of their festival. Made in ghee and topped with sweetened cream layers, it is a delightful indulgence for the locals every rainy season. Meerut is also well known for its naan-khataai. It’s a baked product of refined flour with finely crushed sugar crystals and dry fruits. The fine texture of naan’khataai is such that it immediately melts in your mouth and leaves a delightful taste. Milk products such as lassi, kurchan made in Khurja and Aligarh are also some of the favourites in UP. Khurchan is another interesting preparation made by boiling the milk until its thickened obtaining an extremely Muzaffarnagar taste. Sweetened milk is boiled in big pans and each layer of malaai (cream) is heated repeatedly till the time the semi-liquid paste is formed. This is called ‘khurchan’, served with garnishing of chopped almonds, pistachios and walnuts.
The food is obviously an indispensable aspect of human lives. It is an important reason behind communities of people coming together as one to feast and celebrate the simplest things in life. UP’s food is an intrinsic part of the Awadhi identity and reflection of their history that binds them and a culture they cherish.
Author: Vallavi
