Of traditional food and tales long-lost!

LINK: http://know.burrp.com/food-dining/chef-radha-rao-hyderabadi-food-fete-copperpoint/46172

Over tales of lost Hyderabadi cuisine and Jani mamu’s recipe collection,Sandhya Ramachandran chats up with Radha Rao who is in town to host the Hyderabadi Food Fete at GRT Grand Copper Point.

The first thought that struck me when I first spoke to Radha Rao was how passionate she is about food and how much I’d love to taste her cooking! That is the kind of person she is, effervescent and full of stories to tell about every dish she has carefully planned for the Hyderabadi Food Fete on at the GRT Grand Copper Point till 11th November.

Radha always had leanings towards food, as it was her father who opened the first of its kind Udupi restaurant in the twin cities of Hyderabad and Secunderabad. Radha’s interest drifted towards Hyderabadi cuisine when she came under the influence of her uncle, the gourmet Chef Mir Hussain Ali Moosavi, whom she fondly calls Jani Mamu.

“I inherited all his recipes. He would go to the chowks (by-lanes) in Hyderabad searching for old books about food and cooking. Then he would patiently translate it from Arabic or Persian to Urdu. I translated them to English, although he would often tell me, ‘beta, learn all the languages’ to get the exact recipe,” she explains.

Radha feels that biryaniand haleem have become synonymous with Hyderabadi food and the lost traditions of Hyderabadi households, especially the Muslim families, need to be revived. And in this attempt, the Hyderabadi Food Fete was born, thanks to Radha’s enthusiasm and Mr.Sitaram’s (Culinary Director at GRT Grand) long-standing love for this cuisine.

I ask her to tell us more about the menu (and the tales they carry too!). She begins with the Badam Ke Rab, a sweet dish that likens almonds to God’s food. “It is an old recipe. No one has it, as far as I know. We got it from an old book from one of the chowks,” she elaborates. Her haleem dish has, along with the regular meat and wheat combination, chicken in the korma – yet another innovation found in her Jani Mamu’s collection.

One more badam dish she mentions is theBadam Ki Jaali that Muslim households get made during weddings to gift on silver plates, while inviting or as a return gift to guests. “It is a baked almond dessert,” she says, “and has an almond biscuit at the base with a silvervarq (foil) separating it from a mould cut biscuit that resembles lace or a jaali(screen)”.

In an attempt to give “a complete array of Hyderabadi food”, she has whipped up a menu that changes every day of the fete barring two or three regulars. With oh-so-much to feast upon, I decide to have some fun and urge her to suggest a must-have three-course meal to appease an irate boss.

“Start with the Motiya Sherbet, it would floor anyone,” she begins. “Then if your boss is a hardcore non-vegetarian, urge her/him to try thePattar Ka Ghosht. We cook the meat in the traditional way with actual stones. Also try the Dum Ka Murg(chicken cooked in the dum style of cooking) as its smoky flavour and tasty gravy is sure to please anyone. Finish it with two desserts. A cold one – Khubani Ka Meetha or stewed apricots, and a hot one – Dabbal Ka Meetha which is made out of Hyderabad’s Dabbal bread soaked in sheera (thick sugar syrup) and flavoured with nuts.”

“If you bring a boy instead of your boss, just serve the Motiya Sherbet,” she continues, “he’s sure to propose to you on bent knees with a rose!” Curious, I ask her what this magic dish contains! “Jasmine flowers, a proven aphrodisiac,” she laughs.

Must Try: Kabuli Biryani, Dabbal Ka Meetha, the “comfort food” combination of Steamed Rice-Kaddu Ka Dalcha (bottle gourd with chick pea lentils)-Tali Hui Bhindi (deep fried okra), Pattar Ka Ghosht, Motiya Sherbet

Meal for two: Rs.1900 + taxes

Food Photographs: Copper Point 

Chef Photograph: Sandhya Ramachandran

From the plates of the rich and famous!

LINK: http://know.burrp.com/food-dining/quereshi-nematkhana-festival-at-minar/46014

When you hear that the Quereshi Nematkhana Festival is happening in town, you just know you have to be there, especially if you love good food and good stories to go with it, says Sandhya Ramachandran.

The Quereshi brothers Ashfaque and Irfan are known across the world to whip up some of the best heritage cuisines albeit with some spins. While it may leave many tummies awestruck, they are simply following their father, the legendary Imtiaz Quereshi known for his research on the forgotten cuisines of the Moguls and perfecting its recipes.

Minar Legendary Dum Cuisines of Qureshis, Savera Hotel-Chennai prides itself on having the Quereshi brothers as their restaurant consultants. Minar is the only place in the city where the two ‘Heritage cuisines’ perfected by Qureshi’s – ‘Frontier’ and ‘Dum Pukht’ are available.  So when we heard that The Quereshi Nematkhana Festival (on till 6thNovember) at the Minar, is serving the Chennai public, some of the recipes that the brothers cooked up for celebrities, for dinner, we couldn’t resist but go savour some!

Celebrated for their Dum Pukht cuisine, which involves – apart from a lot of history and legend – cooking the rice, vegetables and meat in a container sealed on top with a thin maida seal, the cuisine literally derives its names from the words dum meaning ‘to breathe in’ and ‘pukht’ referring to the act of cooking.

The special menu that the Quereshi Nematkhana (meaning ‘food storage’ or ‘larder’) Festival has lined up, offers a good variety to choose from. So you could either go for what the Quereshi brothers whipped up for I.K.Gujral’s party, or be a giggly fan girl and gobble up the special they cooked for Hrithik and Suzanne’s wedding reception. Either way, you know what you are feasting on has some story simmering in it. So read through the descriptions on the menu and decide which celebrity you’d like to dine like, that night!

Dressed in kurta pyjama and a topi, the usher welcomes you into the heavily Mughal influenced interiors of Minar complete with jaalis at the entrance, mini jharoka-shaped hanging lamps, Persian patterns on the ceiling, chandeliers and three musicians crooning (with better singing, it would have been a perfect fit to the evening!)

As a basket of papadsmade its way on to our table, we explored the dips kept. There was one particular Papaya Murabba containing papaya soaked in syrup along with chillies, and a sprinkling of sesame and fennel seeds. Basically, a papaya preserve, its incredible bittersweet taste gained our favour, and we nearly made it a starter to our meal!

Officially, however, we began the meal with a Vegetable Curried Soup. Traces of pepper and jeera in a soup made of ground vegetables on a bed of basmati rice, served with a spritz of lime. This clearly was one remarkable soup one has had! On an unusually cold Chennai evening, this soup lent warmth and wholesomeness to the meal.

The actual starters arrived while we still kept digging into the Papaya Murabba. The Aloo Bharwam which had “spiced potatoes and nuts cradled in roasted barrels, finished on dum with fragrant herb gravy” to quote from the menu was as delicious as you could imagine.

The Lahori Paneer Tikka was average since the spices had not seeped into thepaneer! The Kamal Kakri Ke Shami Kebab made out of lotus root minced into a delicate kebab was very similar to the Soya Bean Dum Ke Kebab, made exclusively for Late President of India, Mr. Fakrudhin Ali Ahmed – real dumcuisine, but vegetarian for health reasons. The kebabs were tasty, but were pasty in texture and collapsed on scooping with a spoon, thereby losing its charm. TheGimikhand Ke Kebab also was quite similarly cooked, though a little sweet as it was made from yams.

By the way the Dum Pukht cuisine is primarily a carnivore’s feast and we did find the non-vegetarian food on the menu to be so much better than the vegetarian food on offer. Which is why the Dum Murgh Ki Potlee where a chicken mince was delicately wrapped in a chicken leg skin and grilled after throwing in spices and herbs was what we found fantastic! This classic dish was an absolute work of a genius; the use of chicken skin as a potlee/parcel making it tender and tasty.

Another noteworthy dish is the Mahi Dum Anari which had a red snapper seasoned and stuffed with cheese, capsicum, pomegranate and herbs, and dumcooked on slow roast. Made exclusively for President Clinton’s delegation, this indeed is a delicacy fit for royalty. If only they had avoided or reduced the number of capsicum dices they had stuffed in, we would have written an Ain-e-anari (like the famed book on Akbar Ain-e-Akbari) about this dish.

The Lucknowi Dum Ki Chhaap – a dish conjured for the Nawab Wajid Ali Shah in Lucknow – is made from mutton chops slow cooked on dum with spices is another dish worth recommending. We then came in to our favourite, the biryani section. The Noormahal Gosht Biryani created for the royal Jaipur wedding of HH Bhawani Singh in the 1940’s, had baby lamb and lamb mincekoftas cooked in dum style.  It made for a delicious biryani made the classic way.

In the vegetarian section, we had theSabzi Masala Biryani, a very simple vegetable biryani. The rice was aromatic, although the caramelised onions and the carrots made it a bit sweet in taste. The Sabz Bohri Biryani was what we attempted next. It lured us with a promise of baby potatoes, dry plums, apricots and tomatoes in rice. We ran a thorough search for the plums and apricots, but they were definitely missing in action. However, if we could view it as a baby potato biryani, it was one delightful eat. And yes, we have filed an FIR for the missing apricots and plums!

The dessert sections had the Lab-e-Mahshoukh, a sort of kulfi with rose syrup, nuts with starch noodles twirled around served on a platter. Its claim to fame being that Begum Akhtar favored it and it was created exclusively for the Queen of ghazals herself. Not overtly sweet but rich in taste, the Lab-e-Mahshoukhmade for a grand finale.

Must Try: Vegetable Curried Soup, Papaya Murabba, Dum Murgh Ki Potlee, Mahi Dum Anari, Aloo Bharwan

Meal for two: Rs.1200 approximately

Photographs:  Samarth Jairaman