Lucknow's Home Chefs Serve a Lunch

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. 

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.

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.

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 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.

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 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 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. 

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 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.

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.