The new exciting Bikaner House

Ever since Bikaner House got a makeover last year, it has become an exciting venue for exhibitions and events. 

source: https://www.facebook.com/BikanerHouse16/

My friend Sumedha launched her book Mewar Ramayana there. The book is beautifully illustrated with paintings commissioned by Jagat Singh, the Maharana of the Mewar kingdom.

https://www.facebook.com/BikanerHouse16/

In the 17th century, Jagat Singh commissioned a manuscript retelling the Ramayana. The text is in Sanskrit and the illustrations are in three different styles of Mewar painting.

This is believed to be the most well preserved manuscript form of the Ramayana. The rulers of Mewar trace their ancestry to Lord Rama, and it is but natural that in Jagat Singh's long and prosperous reign of 24 years, a book like this was commissioned.

There have been lots of other launches here as well. A photo-exhibition by Jawai, several designer names, art shows, and so on. It's really shaping up well as an alternative to the more well-established India Habitat Center.

https://www.facebook.com/BikanerHouse16/

Adding significantly to the charm of Bikaner House is Vayu, a design store that offers handcrafted artifacts for the home. They also have lots of lovely curios, jewellery and designer apparel. You need somewhat deep pockets, but it's really lovely and I particularly like their vintage silver jewellery. Last year they had a fabulous pop-up of Bungalow Eight from Mumbai; and lots of other things as well. They're open all days of the week, between 11 am and 7 pm.

If you're heading to Vayu, you can round off the shopping with lunch at the popular Chor Bizarre, which has now opened an outlet in Bikaner House.

I'm really glad to see an old heritage building being re-purposed and brought to life. Bikaner House - along with other royal houses - came up in the 1920s, when the British were building a new capital for the Empire. A portion of this grand new capital was set aside for the princely states of India, that were not officially under the Empire, but operated as independent kingdoms acknowledging British power. A large chunk of India was under these princely states (see all the yellow bits in this map below).

Edinburgh Geographical Institute; J. G. Bartholomew and Sons. - Oxford University Press, 1909

To manage the relationship with the princely states, the British came up with the idea of a Chamber of Princes. The Indian name for this chamber was Narendra Mandal; and it provided a forum in which the rulers of the princely states of India could voice their needs to the colonial government of British India. Once a year, the princely rulers descended upon Delhi for a meeting of the Chamber of Princes. So it made sense to build palaces for them.

source: Getty Images https://goo.gl/XlQIBO

Some of the buildings were very grand indeed. The most impressive was Hyderabad House, reflecting the incredible wealth of the Nizam of Hyderabad. Indeed, the Nizam wanted to build something that would rival the Viceroy's building (now Rashtrapati Bhavan), but of course he was not allowed to do so!

The smallest and coziest of the palaces was Bikaner House, because it was more like a bungalow than a palace. The small size now makes it a perfect venue for events.

source: India Today https://goo.gl/AUfLVr

source: India Today https://goo.gl/AUfLVr

Go on. Head over and take a look. And let me know how it went!

Kahani Kabab Ki - the story of the kabab in India

It is the month of Ramzan now. During the daytime, Old Delhi's Muslim neighbourhoods are quieter than usual, as people stay indoors in the blistering heat, fasting all day long. Not even water is drunk. In the evening, the city cools down, the day's fast is broken, and people gather in large numbers around the many street stalls offering treats.

Crowds outside Jama Masjid, Delhi

The kabab sellers do brisk business, offering skewered, spiced meats to an endless stream of customers. Tangdi kabab, Shammi kabab, kalmi kabab, reshmi kabab....so many varieties!

Kababs being cooked in a typical iron sigri

I was curious about the origins of the word kabab, so I did some digging around. It turns out that the word kabab is actually very old - its roots go back to the ancient Akkadian language, in which kababu means to fry or burn. The Akkadian Empire, dating to around 2300 BC, ruled over what is now Iraq, Turkey, Syria, and parts of Iran. The word kabab also exists in other old languages, such as Aramaic and Persian, which were spoken over a wide geography. It exists in Arabic, which is believed to have developed into a distinct language somwhere in the 3rd century AD. It also exists in Turkic, which between 6th - 11th century AD spread across Central Asia, covering a vast geographical region.

Thus, starting from ancient Akkadian, it appears that the art of spitting and roasting meats has existed continuously for at least 4500 years. The kabab was thus a familar dish among people spread over a very large region, ranging from Egypt to Mesopotamia to the Middle-East.

Shop selling kebabs in Istanbul, Turkey

In India too, the spitting and roasting of meat was well-known. Meat was a significant part of the diet of the Indus Valley civilization, although we don't know if they called it kabab (because we have not yet deciphered their script). During the Mature Harappan period, colonies of Indian traders were established in the Persian Gulf port cities, and even in Mesopotamia. So it is possible that they had at least heard the word kabab :) :)

Based on the archaeological record, we know that the Harappans ate fowl, cattle, chickens, sheep, goats, deer, antelopes and wild boar. It's reasonable to assume that they knew how to grill and cook meat in various ways. Meat skewers have not been unearthed in any Indus Valley sites. But ovens have been found, both small and large, and we can assume that bread and meats were cooked in these ovens much like modern-day tandoori cooking.

Cooking hearth/tandoor/altar, Kalibangan

Ancient Indian literature also contains many references to grilling, frying and cooking meat. In the Ramayana, there is a passage which describes a meal thus: Cooks, under the supervision of diligent stewards, served large pieces of meat roasted on spits, meats cooked as curries, and sauces made of tamarind and pomegranate; young buffalo calves roasted on spits with ghee dropping on them; young buffalo calves fried in ghee, seasoned with acids, rock salt and fragrant leaves; large haunches of venison boiled in different ways with spices and mangoes, and sprinkled over with condiments; shoulders and rounds of animals dressed in ghee, sprinkled over with sea-salt and powdered black peppers, and garnished with radishes, pomegranates, lemon, fragrant herbs, asfoetida and ginger.   

It looks like our ancients were pretty good kababchis themselves :) They liked roasting and grilling spitted meat over flames, as well as cooking it into curries.

Coming back to the word kabab: it is likely that this word made its way again into India in a more recent phase, after we came into extensive contact with the Arabic, Persian and Turkic language.

In 711 AD, the Arabic-speaking Umaiyyad commander Muhammad al-Thaqafi conquered Sind, and thus established the first sustained Indian contact with the Arabic language. The word kabab may have entered the vocabulary of India through that source.

Kabab - a word now understood in all parts of India

India's first sustained contact with Persian language came in the 11th century AD, when the Ghaznavids established themselves in Punjab. The first Turks came to India with Muhammad of Ghor in 1175 AD.

From 1206 AD, when Delhi was ruled by the Ghurids, Mamluks, Khaljis, Tughlaqs and Lodis, Persian was the official language. Turkish was spoken in the bazaars, and Arabic was the liturgical language taught in schools. During the Mughal empire, the official language used was Persian, although both Turkic and Arabic were in use. In the south of India, the rulers of the Deccan Sultanates also used Turkic, Arabic and Persian.

It is my conjecture that between the 8th century and the 18th, the word kabab became widespread in India through these contacts. The entry point was probably "Hindustani", a hotch-potch language which arose in the 11th century AD, through contact between the local Indian population, and various invaders, traders and religious men who settled in Hindustan from the north-west. Hindustani allowed speakers of Turkic, Arabic and Persian to communicate with native Indian speakers. In Delhi, the popular local language was Khadi Boli. Hindustani retained the grammar and structure of Khadi Boli but also absorbed a large number of Persian, Arabic and Turkic words for better cross-cultural communication. It is my conjecture that the word kabab first crept into Hindustani, then established itself over time into both Urdu and Hindi, eventually becoming fully absorbed into the Indian vocabulary.

Rai-Jamun in the monsoons!

The jamun-sellers are back! Yesterday I ate these sweet, slightly sour, happily purple jamuns.

Woman sitting near National Museum who sold us the jamuns

The fruits were sprinkled with kala namak (a type of rock salt)... yum! Apart from
being delicious the salt also counters the jamun's astringency.

These are rai jamuns (Syzigium nervosum), not to be confused with regular jamuns (Syzigium cumini). Rai jamun is a different species that has slightly bigger, more elongated fruits. The jamun wallahs call rai jamun "ashadiya jamun" because it ripens in Ashad (June-July). The regular jamun is called "jamoa" or "bhadoniya jamun", and ripens in Bhadon (August-September). Most of the trees in Lutyens' Delhi are jamuns, though rai jamuns line the lawns on both sides of Rajpath.

2:30 AM at Jama Masjid during Ramzan

Behind the Jama Masjid, the streets were still buzzing with activity at 2:30 AM. More photos to follow.

Photos posted here: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.769636649726319.1073741837.184810518208938&type=3

Beating the heat - Lychee seller in Old Delhi

In the 1700's, lychees came to India from Burma (they are actually originally from China). 

They have adapted well to India; and they grow well especially in Bihar, which today produces 75% of India's lychee crop. It's a difficult fruit, mainly because it has only a week or so of shelf-life, from the time it is harvested.

Lychees ripen on the tree, are harvested in May-June, and they show up on Delhi's handcarts immediately, where they are sold by weight.

Here's a closer look. There are many varieties of lychees in India, but mostly they are pale in colour by the time they come to the market. This is because fruits are transported at normal temperature conditions i.e. without pre-cooling. The market reach is limited to places/cities which can be reached quickly, since the fruits lose their attractive red colour after 48 hours.

The most popular variant is called Shahi (photo above); it is a sort of deep pink in colour, with an oblong shape and rounded end. It is grown in North Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttaranchal and Uttar Pradesh; and it comes to the Delhi market in May. Shahi has a distinct rose aroma; and it has a thin, more delicate skin compared to other varities of lychees.

When lychees are harvested, it is always along with the twigs and leaves (you can see the twigs in the photo). Care is taken not to let the fruit fall to the ground during harvest. They are packed in baskets along with grass, twigs and leaves, and sent to the nearest city.

Lychees growers rarely market it themselves. They actually pre-sell their crop to contractors, who then take over the orchard during harvest time. The contractor has full control over the orchard for that period. After harvest, the famer is back in control of the orchard. Of course, the contractor makes most of the money.

Better facilities for cooling, storage and transport would really improve the returns from lychee (export markets will open up more). It will also allow farmers to market directly to the cities. As always, it's a question of scale and infrastructure.

Thoughts on Delhi-Belly and how to avoid it

"How can I avoid Delhi Belly?"

I get asked this question very regularly, so I thought I'd post a reply here.

Travellers get stomach upsets in India due to multiple reasons. The primary reason is of course hygiene, or rather, the lack of it.

If you're eating at an upscale restaurant or a five-star hotel, you can be more or less sure that the food is hygenic and the ingredients are fresh. Even in mid-range restaurants, there are lots of places which are very popular and where the food turnaround is quick.  If you're on a driving tour, your driver will know of such places. They are usually places where lots of tourists go, and where the drivers are often offered free meals.

Restaurant near Agra highway, nothing fancy, but good food, our driver took us.

The street stalls are definitely iffy. Avoiding street food is a good idea, although that usually means missing out on some of the best food in the country. If you want to try street food, then eating at places where the food is fresh, where it is cooked right before serving, is a good idea. Many stalls often offer freshly cooked or fried food, but their eating utensils and the water they use to wash them in are questionable. If you're just eating a freshly deep-fried samosa off a piece of paper, you will actually be ok, but eat a little, and don't gorge whole platefuls. 

Typical stall in Old Delhi - sellling pakoras, samosas, jalebis, etc.

Eating vegetarian is an even better idea, especially if you are on a budget, because at cheaper non-vegetarian stalls, there is usually no refrigeration and the quality of the fish and meat is questionable.

The second (and bigger) reason why people get stomach upsets is the nature of the food in restaurants. Indian food tends to have a complex set of spices, and while this makes it delizioso :) :) it also makes it difficult for your stomach.

Spices, chutneys and pickles at Paranthewali Galli

When I travel in Rajasthan, I always get stomach upsets because the masalas and cooking techniques of Rajasthani food are different from what I use at home. Also restaurant food tends to be more greasy and buttery than the light food we eat at home. The way to handle this is to try and mix familiar and unfamiliar foods in your trip. For foreigners visiting India, I would recommend eating Western breakfasts and dinners, and Indian lunches (while sightseeing). This gives your digestive system the ability to handle things well. Another major secret is yoghurt. Indians drink lots of lassi, and eat lots of yoghurt. This keeps our internals in good order.

The famous lassi at Mishrilal, Jodhpur

Some other do's and don't: Stick to bottled water. Avoid fresh juices from street stalls. Avoid salads that have been in the open too long. Stay in places where the food is of good quality. Bring hand sanitizer. That's about it. Beyond this, you have to trust to luck!

Oven-baked Amritsari Aloo Kulcha

My version of oven-baked Amritsari Aloo Kulcha.

A desi-pizza, really!

Very, very tasty. Stuffed with masala potatoes, garnished with chaat masala, red chilli powder and fresh coriander.

Dough: made just like pizza dough, refined flour + yeast, raised and made to sit for 2 hours.

Stuffing: Boil and mash potatoes, add salt, amchur (dry mango powder), red chilli powder, coriander, cumin.

Roll and pat by hand with oil, into small circle. Add a spoon of stuffing, fold and pat again by hand into kulcha shape, flip from hand to hand to stretch.

Heat oven to 250C and bake for 4-5mins.

Garnish with chaat masala and a little red chilli powder and coriander leaves. Serve hot.

We are having it with tadka dal, i.e. dal tempered with cumin, garlic, green chillies. We also made biryani, but that was because I thought this kulcha wouldn't work out.

Beating the heat - Shikanji-seller near Red Fort

Summer is here! So I thought I'd post a cooling image for the hot days ahead!

Shikanji is hugely popular in Delhi, you will see hand-carts selling Shikanji everywhere. The drink is primarily lemon-juice and water, to which sugar, black salt and mint is added. Often there is cumin and ginger also. Each shikanji seller has his own balance of ingredients, making for a non-standardised but always yummy taste. It's a great way to replenish the electrolytes that you lose in the heat. In some larger stalls, it is served with soda, instead of water.

If you want to try making it at home, you can go to the market and ask for Jain Shikanji Masala. All you need to do is add lemon-juice and water or soda to it, and adjust the sugar levels to your liking. Garnish with mint.

Stuffed and baked capsicum (green bell peppers) - desi-style

Yesterday I made these stuffed capsicum (green bell peppers), and they turned out pretty yummy, so I thought I'd post the photo here.

These are perfect when you have guests for lunch and you want to make something that looks fantastic, but is really quite easy to execute. And they're baked, and have very little fat/oil, so it's guilt-free too.

Before and after baking

For the base:
3 or 4 bell peppers, sliced in half, and the inside scooped out

For the stuffing: 

• Boiled potatoes (about 2 large potatoes)
• Cottage cheese (we made it at home, but you can buy it at the store) - as much as you like, but around one-third the amount of potatoes is good.
• Green chillies - 1 chilli, sliced into tiny, tiny, bits
• Fresh coriander - a handful, including stems, again sliced into tiny bits
• Cumin powder, Coriander power, Red chilli powder - to taste (I used about half tea-spoon of each)
• Amchur (dried mango) powder - half tea-spoon
• Salt - to taste

I've seen recipes with more ingredients in the stuffing - typically, ginger and onions. Some recipes have peas. There are no rules, you can pretty much experiment with whatever you like.

How to make (easy-peasy):

Crumble the cottage cheese, potatoes, add all the stuff above to it, then pack it inside the bell pepper. There's no need to pack super-tight. Put some oil or butter or ghee on top of the stuffing (I didn't do it). Pre-heat oven at 180 C, and bake for 15-20 minutes or until the skin of the pepper becomes wrinkly, the way it is in this photo. Serve immediately, when it is hot.

You can garnish with coriander or sprinkle chaat masala before serving. Also towards the end of the baking, you can sprinkle cheese on top and melt it if you like. We ate it with triangle-shaped parathas, dal spiced with jeera, garlic and red chillies, kachumer (salad of cucumber, onion, tomatoes), rice, yoghurt and pickle.

Winter greens in Delhi - and a date with palak bhajiyas!

As soon as winter appears, we begin to see lots of greens in the market. Sarson (mustard) is very popular right now. It is a rabi crop, and harvested typically from December onwards. 

Sarson

The next photo is of a less well-known winter green: bathua. It is a wild relative of the spinach family, and can be used just like spinach in curry dishes. It is sometimes combined with sarson to make saag (a sort of pureed curry eaten with parathas). One of the popular dishes made with this is bathua raita. 

Bathua

Spinach (palak) is also part of the regular winter diet. Today we made palak bhajiya (spinach fritters), and I remembered to pull out my camera and click some photos before we ate it all!

Step 1: Fresh spinach leaves, cleaned and stems removed.
The batter is of chickpea flour, salt, chilli powder, cumin and coriander.

Step 2: Heat vegetable oil in a kadai (Indian wok). Dip leaves in batter until
it is fully coated. The batter has to be thick or it won't stick.

Step 3: Make sure the oil is sizzling hot before you pop in the leaves.
To test the oil, you can drop a little bit of the batter and see if it
immediately sizzles and rises to the top.

Step 4: Ta da! Palak bhajiya served!
It has to be golden and crisp before you take it out of the oil.

Serve hot with spicy green chutney and tomato ketchup. Or with a sweet and sour date-and-tamarind chutney. Sprinkle a little chaat masala for added tang; and make sure you have hot masala chai with it! It's the perfect antidote for a winter evening.

The Bakeries of Old Delhi (and their many delights!)

For the past month, the bakeries of Old Delhi have been especially busy. Their ovens have been churning out various types of delights for the Ramzan feasts.

We walked past Sikander Bakery a couple of days ago, and found them making their popular rusks.

The popular Sikander Bakery is super-busy.
They were making rusks.

Have you seen how rusks are made? Did you know that they are "twice-baked"? The first time it is baked like a soft bread, something resembling a brioche. Then it is sliced, the slices are placed on trays and baked a second time. It's the second round of baking that makes rusks perfectly crisp for dipping into chai. 

Indian-style rusks originated by happy accident. They have their beginnings in the city of Surat, which was the biggest trading port on the Western coast of India during the reign of Jehangir and Shah Jahan. The Dutch had a settlement in Surat, and they established a bakery there, teaching the art of baking bread to five Parsi gentlemen. 

When the Dutch left Surat (I assume somewhere in the early 1800s), one Parsi gentleman called Dotivala took over their bakery. Business was not good; as locals did not eat the kind of bread that Dotivala produced. In those days, bread was fermented with toddy sap, to prevent spoiling. But old bread would lose moisture and become hard. When he was stuck with old surplus bread, Dotivala sold it to the poor at low prices. Soon he discovered that these hard breads were very popular with people, who dipped them in tea to soften them. So Dotivala began to deliberately harden his bread, through a process of drying them in the ovens a second time. And thus the "toast biscuit" or rusk was born. If you want to see what Dotivala makes these days, you should check out their website. They still have toast biscuits.

The same "double-baking" method is used in the bakeries of Old Delhi:

Soft bread out of the oven after the first round of baking.
Ready for slicing.

The slicing process.

Rusks going into second round of baking.
Bakeries are typically small operations with a
single bhatti (oven). This means the only way to
handle the Ramzan rush is by working extra hours.

In the photo below, you can see rectangular packages of rusks, wrapped in clear plastic.

Lots of rusks for sale. They are sweet as well as savoury.
In the bottom right corner you can see a circular bread called paapey, or gol-paapey.
Pappe have anise inside, and are dusted with poppy seeds after baking.
In the left bottom, you can also see pheni, which is a thin vermicelli.

The most visible thing in the market during Ramzan is pheni, very fine noodles that have been fried (supposedly) in ghee. These are eaten with hot, sweetened milk, and often garnished with pistachios and almonds. Pheni is typically a Sehri dish (pre-dawn meal). Pheni is of different types, some are super-fine, some are saffron flavoured, some are coloured, some are fried almost a dark brown.

Pheni or feni, does not need cooking as it is already fried

Pheni is sold sometimes in
long thin threads

Apart from rusk and pheni, there are lots of interesting bakery products / breads you can see in the market during Ramzan.

Sheermal is a sweet bread; usually the dough is sweetened with milk and sugar, and flavoured with saffron. It is popular in Old Delhi but many bakeries only make them during Ramzan or other festivals. Sheermal probably has origins in Iran, where they are almost twice the size of the ones below, and they are commonly sold in the markets. The Irani sheermal seems much thinner too.

Sheermal

I'm not sure what this bread is, but it looks like a sheermal that has been dunked in sugar and saffron syrup, ready to eat:

Looks awesome.

There is also khajla, deep-fried, flaky and melt-in-the-mouth.
Like pheni, khajla is also usually eaten in the
pre-dawn hours for Sehar.
Photo courtesy Nadeem Khan

Coconut Parantha, a mild-tasting unleavened
bread flavoured with coconut
(also from Nadeem Khan, thanks Nadeem!)

The soft Khamiri Rotis, baked in tandoors are hugely popular

And as if all this wasn't enough, Delhi's repertoire of baked goodies also includes lots of stuff sold all through the year in tiny shops scattered around the city.

Masala Twists

In the foreground is a pastry called "fein" or "fan".
Behind that are the always-popular cream rolls.

And of course, there is also that awesome delight, the nankhatai, about which I posted some time ago.

The Nankhatai Man

With all these treats, one would think the bakeries in Old Delhi are prospering. But it's quite clear that they are in fact, struggling to stay afloat. There aren't as many of them as there used to be. Everywhere in Old Delhi you see branded biscuits and other packaged eatables from big companies; so I am sure they are taking away a big chunk of the bakeries' business. I don't know how long these bakeries will survive.

Of Papad and Urad

On a lazy afternoon, the papad-walla is very welcome in homes and shops in Old Delhi. Here he is, selling roasted urad-dal papads, sprinkled with masala. It's the perfect snack with hot chai.

Papad seller talking to a family 
near Fatehpuri Masjid, Old Delhi.
It's not just adults who like this snack. 
Kids love it too.

Roasted papads are a very inexpensive snack (you can get 2 papads for just one rupee). They are very popular among families picnicking at India Gate in the evenings (although these days papad sellers are becoming a rare sight there). The secret of the papad's popularity is not just the low price, it's the spicy tangy masala that is sprinkled on it. You'll always see people asking for more masala :)

Among Delhi's poorer families, school-going children often eat roasted papad for breakfast, along with a cup of tea. A friend of mine, doing a PhD at Delhi, says that in one low-income community she surveyed, nearly 50% of the kids ate papad for breakfast. I was pretty shocked, really, and then I felt really stupid at my lack of knowledge of what poverty is really all about. What was I expecting? A fancy breakfast with fruit juice? 

Papad doesn't really meet any nutritional needs, although since roasted papads are made of lentils, I suppose they are better than nothing. Typically, these papads are made of urad-dal (black gram), a lentil that is native to India. In fact, India is the world's largest producer (and consumer) of urad dal. Black gram accounts for more than 40 % of total legume seeds traded in the world, although I haven't seen it being used in any Western cuisines. Have you? I think it is used in central Asia and some Asian countries. 

Whole black gram (akkha urad or sabut urad)
photographed in my kitchen

In India it is used not just for papads; but also as part of the daily diet, especially in South India, where it is a part of almost every breakfast (dosa, idli, vada).

Home-made dosa for breakfast. 
The batter is made of rice and urad dal.
The thick iron griddle is one of my prized possessions :)

In Delhi, other than papads, the most popular dish with urad dal is the famous Dal Makhani.

Dal Makhani (in the bucket) and a 
super-orangey paneer butter masala!!

At the ITC Maurya, they have their signature Dal Bukhara:

From the Arkansas blog of  Max and Ellen, who travelled with us on a Delhi Magic Tour
http://www.arktimes.com/ArkansasBlog/archives/2012/12/18/my-passage-to-india

The picture above is a collage of two separate photos - on the left is a typical meal at the Maurya's Bukhara, with tandoori roti, dal bukhara, kebabs etc. On the right is the menu of the special Presidential Platter that the restaurant created after Bill Clinton's visit. It is supposed to be for 2 people, but really, in my view, four people can eat what they serve. There is a vegetarian version of this platter as well, inspired by Chelsea Clinton.

There are several studies showing that urad-dal boosts the immune system. It is traditionally used in Ayurveda for several things, including as a face scrub, treatment for dandruff and acne, as a solution for low sperm count and erectile dysfunction in men, and for problems with menstruation. If you're interested in natural remedies, then see this link.

But if like me, your primary interest is in food, then look for a papad seller and try a roasted papad. And don't forget to ask for extra masala!