Menu for the Lunch with the home chefs. (2024)Lucknow Bioscope
This exhibition is a celebration of our home chefs and the rich culinary traditions that lie within Lucknow homes.
Dastarkhwan (food spread) with home chefs (2024)Lucknow Bioscope
Dastarkhwan (spread) with the home chefs
Ashhar Jamal
is an educationist with a PhD in linguistics from the Institute of English and Foreign Languages, Hyderabad. Ashaar’s forefathers were ulemas and hakeems and the family has lived in the same area of old Lucknow for seven generations. Firmly rooted in her past, she has grown up amidst the familiar aromas of traditional food.
Ashhar says that cooking in Lucknow is seasonal in nature. The most popular winter dish is Paaya or trotters. It follows a belief that if eaten a couple of times in the season, it protects one from the bitter cold of Lucknow winters. Lucknowwallahs like to believe these stories so as to enjoy a guilt-free bowl of steaming hot payas several times in the winter.
Other winter dishes are Shaljam Gosht, Gobhi Gosht, Moong Gosht. Another popular winter dish is Methi ki Khichdi. Eaten on three consecutive days, keeps the cold at bay, Ashhar’s Dadi would say. Coming from a family of hakeems, as her Dadi did, there could be some truth in the matter. Winter greens are popular in Ashhar’s home, to be paired with Makke ki Roti or Bajre ki Roti and so is Matar Pulao and Koftee Pulao. The latter dish is unique to Lucknow, it combines rice, peas and baby koftas or bite sized minced meat balls to be paired with a smoked Baigan Raita (in picture).
Ashhar is a contributor to Awadhi Home Cooked Food Lunch at the annual Mahindra Sanatkada Lucknow Festival. She is also one of the editors of the cookbook, Lucknowi Bawarchi Khane: Food from Lucknow Homes.
Farzana Shahbuddin
She is an accomplished artist who has attended art workshops in Lucknow and London and has held solo and joint exhibitions in India and abroad. She is the curator for art by women, for women, under the aegis of ‘Rising Beyond the Ceiling’.
Her family, originally from Bundelkhand, eventually settled down in Lucknow and this has been the primary influence on her culinary skills. The recipes that she follows have been passed down from her mother and grandmother and now she shares them with her daughter.
Since its inception, Farzana has been cooking for the Awadhi Home Cooked Festival, along with other home chefs like herself. The Aloo Gosht Ka Salan, Chuqandar Gosht (in picture), and Palak Gosht served by her has been appreciated by many.
Fatima Rizvi
An educationist by profession, she is currently Professor, Dept of English, Lucknow University. Fatima lived in Mumbai during her formative years and learnt to appreciate the local food. Even today she treats her family to her cooked-from-scratch Mumbai delicacies. The more variety one finds in food, the greater is the joy to be derived from it, she says. In her home now, spices that are specific to Lucknow are used and consumed, especially in the meat dishes such as Qorma, Shami Kabab, Galawat Kabab, Biryani, Arhar dal, Sagpaita etc.
Lucknow food has a variety of vegetarian dishes as well. One of the dishes that Fatima fondly recalls is Muqashshar, which is a dish of dry moong lentils cooked to perfection by a practiced hand. Each grain of the lentil should be cooked through yet remain separate or, as in local parlance, ‘khila hua’.
Rizvi has taken part in the Awadhi Home Cooked Festival and enjoyed the experience. She served Kababi Gosht (in picture), a dish prepared with the spices used in kababs. The spices that are used are important, but more important is the fact that the mutton pieces should be tender and cooked through.
Sheeba Iqbal
As a young teenager, Sheeba started to understand the basics of cooking. Her working mother would leave the ingredients on the kitchen counter with instructions in simple steps on how to cook, which Sheeba would do when she returned from school. And when the family sat down to eat, there was always praise for whatever she had cooked. The appreciation served as the motivation. However, it was after her marriage, that Sheeba learnt authentic Awadhi cooking and the correct use of masalas from her mother-in-law.
Sheeba has now taught her helpers how to cook, so her role is supervisory in nature. Her team also cook for the iconic Awadhi-speciality restaurant Naimat Khana, under her supervision. She has standardized all her recipes and they are the ones that had been shared with her by her mother-in-law. Her Ghutva Kababs and Biryani are very popular as also are her Masala Aloos among her vegetarian dishes.
A staunch advocate of Lucknowi heritage and culture, Sheeba lives in a home that is more than a hundred years old and is located in one of the oldest quarters of Lucknow. She participates regularly at the Awadhi Home Cooked Festival and has contributed her recipe for Qorma in the Lucknowi Bawarchi Khane: Food from Lucknow Homes.
Sufia Kidwai
She is an educationist by profession. After retiring from her job as a teacher of English, she has tried to revive old forgotten recipes and to innovate on existing cuisines. Sufia learnt to cook at the insistence of her father and would charm him with her ever improving culinary skills. She was also inspired by her mother who was an excellent cook herself.
Sufia had served a Khichda at the first Awadhi Home Cooked Festival, which is now a dish much in demand. Mutton raan (in picture) is one of her signature dishes. She cooks Rasbhari Keema, a combination of mutton and seasonal fruit and this dish is unique to her household. There is more to food than meets the eye, says Sufia. During a wedding, sometimes there is an attempt to fool the bridegroom by presenting him with’ fake’ food. Dahi Badas and Shahi Tukdas are made of cotton wool, as an exact replica of the real thing. These pranks are a source of good- natured fun, in an attempt to welcome the bridegroom as part of the new family. Sufia is one of the curators and editors of Lucknowi Bawarchi Khane: Food from Lucknow Homes. She has translated from Urdu to English, Mirza Jafar Husain’s ‘The Classic Cuisine of Lucknow: A Food Memoir’. Sufia is a founding member of the Awadhi Home Cooked Food Festival.
Anjum Hasan
Anjum has specialized in Lucknowi cuisine for which she is a food consultant. Her interest in cooking started early in life as she watched both her grandmothers supervise the cooking in their homes. Her signature sweet-dishes like Chane ki dal ka Halwa, Shahi-Tukda, Kheer, Sheer Qorma, Phirini and Ande ka Halwa are based on recipes shared by her paternal grandmother.
Anjum has standardized all her recipes, so she has been able to retain the desired taste of a dish, irrespective of the quantity that is being cooked. Her popular chicken dish is Zafrani Murgh (in picture) and she gives equal weightage to vegetarian and non- vegetarian cooking. To master this, she has had to work hard at modifying the basic meat recipes to bring the same flavour to her vegetarian dishes. Her Paneer Qorma is cooked, using the same spices as the Mutton Korma, and paneer is also a good substitute for mutton when cooking vegetarian Galawati Kababs. She uses lotus stems to create her famous Sabz kababs.
Matar pulao (in picture),tehri, and baghre chawal are some of the rice dishes she enjoys cooking.
Her MBA degree with a specialization in Economics helps her to organize her work more efficiently. Anjum is also a member of the Food Committee that organizes the Awadhi Home Cooked Food Festival.
Bulbul Godiyal
Born and brought up in Lucknow, Bulbul’s earliest memories are those her paternal grandmother serving Bengali snacks and sweets to the children, such as, Dum Aloo, Aloo Kachori, Hare Matar and different kinds of sweets like Khajoor ke gur ki Kheer. Later, Bulbul’s mother started cooking Bengali dishes as well. Her parents were fond of Awadhi food and sometimes this was also served at the table. Bulbul enjoys both cuisines but her heart lies in cooking and serving traditional Bengali food.
Bulbul has been Additional Advocate General U.P. [2012-2017. She is the only woman to be honoured as Senior Advocate by the Lucknow High Court. She belongs to the Bengali Community that has played a big role in contributing to the cultural and educational temper of Lucknow.
Bulbul has been part of the Awadhi Home Cooked Festival, where her fish delicacy, Machher Jhaal (in picture) is very popular. The recipe for the same has been included in the recipe book Lucknowi Bawarchi Khane: Food from Lucknow Homes. For Bulbul, cooking is a passion and stress buster and she believes that good food binds people together. She cooks a lot of traditional Bengali food to keep her mother’s and grandmother’s memory alive. She also does it to keep the younger generation in touch with their traditional food and also serves it to guests at her sumptuous table.
Shazia Fakhr
Shazia belongs to Almora, Uttarakhand and shifted to Lucknow after her marriage. Her mother had familiarized her with masalas and some tips on cooking which proved useful when Shazia actually started to cook.
Shazia married into a family where the women of the house cooked the food and handled the kitchen themselves and where good cooking was always appreciated. Her mother-in-law, Iqbal Jahan, herself is an excellent cook. A quick pupil, Shazia soon learnt to cook Qorma, Biryani, Kababs etc. As Iqbal Jahan nears her 100th birthday, she sits back to relax and leaves it to Shazia to manage the kitchen.
Shazia has been participating in the Awadhi Home Cooked Festival for the past many years. Her Yakhni Pulao (in picture) arrives at the festival, just off the stove, and the queues at her stall are daunting. People carry away platters of steaming rice and raita and the contents of her huge deg are over in no time. This recipe is included in the Lucknowi Bawarchi Khane: Food from Lucknow Homes.
Anuradha Chak
Anuradha Chak inherited heirloom recipes on Kashmiri food from her maternal grandfather, a restaurateur, and from her mother-in -law and grand-mother-in-law, which made her realize her true calling. Improvising and innovating upon traditional Kashmiri recipes, she specializes in Kashmiri Pandit cuisine of the plains. Her Kashmiri menu includes, among other things, Mutton Roghan Josh, Goshtaba and Kabargah. With their ancestral home located in the Kashmiri Mohalla, her husband’s family call themselves Awadhi Kashmiris, having emigrated from Kashmir to Lucknow five generations ago. Awadhi influences have crept into her food and she cooks the Lucknowi Seekh Kababs and Mutton Nahari as well.
Anuradha has taken part in the Awadhi Home Cooked Food Festival and her Kashmiri vegetarian food especially her Methi Chaman (in picture) and Dum Aloo have been well received. The festival has been in many ways an eye opener for her. She saw that the unique dishes which had disappeared from the tables of Lucknow were being showcased, creating an awareness about Lucknow’s rich food legacy.
Noor Khan
Noor Khan is an educationist and retired as the principal of Karamat Husain Muslim Girls’ PG College, Lucknow. She is one of the organizers of the Awadhi Home Cooked Festival and is one of the curators and editors of the Sanatkada cookbook, Lucknowi Bawarchi Khane: Food from Lucknow Homes. Her knowledge of cooking is based on a recollection of random memories as she watched her mother-in-law, at work in the kitchen, and her beloved khansama Nizamuddin, create magic with his fingers.
A vegetarian by choice, she experiments with multiple forms of cooking, creating dishes that are uniquely her own. Her popular Lal Mirch Ka Keema, served at the Awadhi Home Cooked Food Festival is one such dish. It is popular and fast moving, uniquely her own, seasonal in nature, and she uses the dum technique to cook the dish till the flavour of the red chillie seeps into the cooked mince. She has contributed this recipe to the Sanatkada cookbook and also her mother-in-law’s recipe of Zarda (in picture), a sweet rice flavoured with green cardamom and saffron.
She feels that vegetables are inherently very delicate by nature and are to be evenly chopped and cooked with minimum of spices to retain their taste and texture. Some vegetables taste best when additional flavours of tamarind pulp and chopped jaggery are added to create a finely balanced sweet and sour effect, as in the cooking of Karela Khatta Meetha (in picture), a typical Lucknow dish. Her family roots lie in Rampur and the Amethi qasba of Lucknow.
Sundri
Sundri belongs to a small village in the Bundelkhand region. She grew up in extreme poverty, and was married off at the age of 9. As a victim of domestic violence, she realized that her life would not change till stood on her own feet. A determined Sundri picked up the basics of cooking from her maternal uncle and set up her own food stall.
Life changed for Sundri when she was introduced to the members of an all-women’s self -help group called Vanangana. Here, a number of struggling women came together to cook as part of an initiative called Apni Rasoi. Sundri became one of the founding members of this women’s only catering unit. She traveled to different parts of the country on catering assignments and learnt to cook with confidence, serving up to 300 people at a time. Currently she is a home manager and leads a life of dignity.
Sundri has been a chef for the Awadhi Home Cooked Food Festival. Her speciality is the vegetarian thali and her chane ka saag (in picture), a winter special, is very popular.
Rashmi Vaid
She is the face behind the famous Marwari thali at the Awadhi Home Cooked Festival, one of its senior home chefs and also one of its earliest participants. She is also the face of Marwari entrepreneurship in Lucknow and her dynamism lies hidden behind her soft spoken and gentle exterior. A hotelier by profession, she also runs a chain of successful restaurants in the city.
Her recipes for Kair Sengar and Papad Mangodi (in picture) have been included in the recipe book Lucknowi Bawarchi Khane: Food from Lucknow Homes. She outsources raw material for many of her dishes from her extended family in Rajasthan.
A skilled craftsperson, her personal touch can be seen in her meticulously maintained lawns, with its variety of fruit trees and flowering bushes, her bonsai collection and in her terrace garden.
Atiya Naqvi
Originally from Fatehpur, Atiya settled in Pratapgarh, where she is a homemaker with a flare of cooking. Atiya’s family members were fond of cooking and hosting guests, and similar interests were shared in the home of her in-laws where the men were fond of cooking too. Atiya and her brother- in- law shared cooking duties and the kitchen functioned happily.
Atiya’s sons are fond of cooking and she shares her recipes with them. Her elder son runs his own restaurant and many of her recipes find a place on his menu. Atiya gives a useful tip on how to cook a good biryani. She says red chilli is not to be added to the masala or else the biryani will end up tasting like tehri. Biryani is to be cooked using the dum technique.
Atiya participates in the Awadhi Home Cooked Food Festival where she has cooked vegetarian dishes like Muchchi ka Salan, and non-vegetarian dishes like Mutton Stew. Her sweet dishes like Kali Gajar ka Halwa, Moong Dal ki Kheer, Shakarqand ki Kheer (in picture) have been very popular.
Curation: Noor Khan, Saman Habib, Aarti Soni, Mariyam Imran, Ansaf
Graphics: Stuti Mishra
Photography and Videography: Aisha Khatoon, Isha Pratap Singh, Anshubhi Singh, Tasveer, Hasan, Ayan Bose
Text, Editing and Translation: Mini Sinha, Noor Khan, Stuti Mishra, Divya Joshi
