Saffron and Pearls

by Doreen Hassan

30 limes, to juice

  20 whole green chillies

  Salt to taste

  METHOD

  Make sure the 30 whole limes are dry, and prick holes over them.

  Juice the other 30 limes.

  Put the whole limes and green chillies into a jar and pour the lime juice and salt over.

  Shake well and keep in the sun for at least a week. The limes should swell up and change colour. Store in the fridge.

  To serve, remove one or two limes, as you need, and as many green chillies as you would like. Cut the limes into pieces and leave the chillies whole.

  Allow to cool and then store in a bottle.

  ANDE KA ACHAAR

  A delicious way to use eggs, this pickle keeps for two weeks in the fridge.

  INGREDIENTS

  3 cups vinegar

  12 hard boiled eggs, shelled

  12 cloves

  12 peppercorns

  6 dried red chillies

  4 garlic cloves

  1" cinnamon stick

  1" piece ginger

  1 tablespoon mustard seeds, coarsely ground

  ½ teaspoon sugar

  Salt to taste

  METHOD

  Grind ginger and garlic together. In a pan, combine this paste with all the ingredients, except the eggs. Bring the mixture to the boil and let it simmer for 15 minutes. Strain it and let cool.

  Put all the eggs in a large jar with a tight lid. Pour the strained vinegar into the jar, shut tight and leave it be for a week in a cool, dry place.

  Ande ka Achaar

  TAAZA JHINGA KE ACHAAR

  INGREDIENTS

  ¼ kg prawns, cleaned and minced

  250 ml tomato puree

  ¾ cup vinegar

  3 onions, minced

  3 to 4 green chillies

  5 teaspoons sugar

  3 teaspoons chilli powder

  3 teaspoons cumin powder

  3 teaspoons mustard seeds, ground

  3 teaspoons ginger-garlic paste

  2 teaspoons salt

  1 teaspoon turmeric powder

  METHOD

  Wash and dry prawns. Heat oil in a pan and add salt and turmeric, mixed together. Fry for a minute or two before adding in the onions, and let these brown.

  In the meantime, mix the ginger-garlic paste, ground mustard seeds and chilli and cumin powders with the vinegar. Then, add curry leaves into the pan with the masala and vinegar paste. Fry for a few minutes, and pour in the tomato puree. When all the ingredients in the pan are well amalgamated, add prawns, sugar and green chillies. Cook until the prawns are soft. Let it cool before decanting into a bottle.

  InThe City of Saffron and Pearls

  WARP AND WEFT : Preserving History

  No matter how busy my day, or how much I have on my plate, the one thing I never compromise on is paying attention to my outfit. I love textiles, traditional Indian craftsmanship and jewellery – I always have, even as a young girl, and over the years, it has truly become a passion of mine. Which is why I love visiting the headquarters of Suraiya Apa’s weaving unit, which she runs out of our family farmhouse in Hyderabad, with help from Dominic, my brother-in-law.

  Weavers, trained by her, spin truly magnificent bolts of Persian brocades such as mashru, himroo, jamavar and paithani, reviving ancient crafts. She also sources kalamkari, ikat and linen fabrics as well as the most beautiful and unique sarees. My weakness, I must confess, are these sarees and over the decades, I have managed to build a collection of ikats, especially in cotton and silk, that I truly treasure, and that win me countless compliments every time I wear them. Visiting the farm and spending time with Suraiya Apa is a very important part of my frequent trips home to Hyderabad. As a family, we are very grateful for the opportunity to revive these traditional crafts and provide employment to underprivileged women; there is also a school on the premises, so the children of the employees are catered to as well.

  Perhaps in a different life I might have studied fashion but even without formal training, I did run a successful boutique for many years, creating Indian wear that was designed by me and embellished by very skilled craftsmen. My visits to the farm and my own collection of these priceless weaves help me maintain a deep connection with fashion, craftsmanship and textiles – which is why sharing this part of my life has been an important story in the book.

  Snacks

  ONE-BY-TWO PAUNA: Where Have All The Irani Cafes Gone?

  In Vienna and Paris, one goes to a cafe for coffee; in Shanghai and Tokyo, one goes to a teahouse for tea. Only in Hyderabad would you go to a cafe for tea. And thereby hangs a tale.

  If you were a student, taxi driver, government clerk, political activist, poet or an unemployed youth in the Hyderabad of the 1960s and 1970s, chances are you would have spent long hours in an Irani cafe, seated on a bentwood chair with a round seat, with a cup of tea on the glass- or marble-topped table in front of you.

  Immigrant Iranis brought the European cafe culture to Bombay first, and when they discovered that the city preferred tea to coffee, they, of course, offered it in a cafe. From Bombay, the Irani cafe made its way to Hyderabad and eventually, there was one on every street corner between the city’s Hussain Sagar Lake and Charminar – Cafe Khayyam, Cosmopolitan Cafe, Azizia Cafe, Garden Cafe...the list went on. And with each cafe grew a culture rich with food and drink, its own vocabulary and a repository of stories.

  ‘Ek pauna, do biskoot,’ the server would shout as a customer slowly made his way out. The word pauna derives from pau, which means a quarter. A quarter of the teacup is left empty so that two spoons of thick milk and two spoons of sugar can be added to dark, over-boiled tea. Dark brown, milky, sweet – the pauna came served in small teacups. The manager, seated at the door which served as both entrance and exit, would of course know precisely which customer should be charged for it. There were no bills, no frills. The server’s memory was all. Try walking out without paying the bill, the server would only shout louder and more forcefully – ‘Ek pauna, do biskoot!’ Everyone paid.

  That practice of billing you by shouting out your order generated its own humour. Those who sat long hours ordering nothing – as we did – had a self-deprecatory announcement that would declare our exit – ‘Khaaya nai, peeya nai, glass thoda. Chaaranai!’ (‘Ate nothing. Drank nothing. Broke a glass. Four annas!)

  It was a measure of the Irani owner’s indulgence towards us students that we would very often step into a cafe merely to grab chairs and sit around a table discussing student politics, the writing of Marx and Kafka, the films of Ray and Wajda or which guy that girl was looking at. Endless cups of tea would be ordered, but often shared in a one-by-two pauna – half the tea remained in the cup, the other half was poured onto the saucer and slurped down. A metaphor of our times.

  For my generation of Hyderabadi students, and indeed for that of Peter Hassan and his friends, Irani cafes were the place to hang out. There was not a day during my time in Nizam College that my friends and I would not find ourselves in one. Our tea was accompanied by the famous sweet-and-salty Osmania biscuits, which were named for the last Nizam of Hyderabad, Mir Osman Ali Khan. Baked with almost equal amounts of butter and sugar, it is that pinch of salt that gives the Osmania biscuit its edge.

  A hungry taxi driver would of course want something more substantial such as bun-maska served with an omelette. My personal favourite at an Irani cafe was always the small, crispy onion samosa. Deep-fried, the thin pastry layer gives it crispness, and the combination of the onion and coriander filling is full of flavour. Some cafes offered another Hyderabadi variant of the samosa – the lukhmi. One could get a vegetable lukhmi filled with potato or a non-vegetarian version with kheema. The lukhmi’s outer layer is thicker than that of an onion samosa. For a Hyderabadi in New Delhi the only place to go for a lukhmi, if one is lucky, is the home of Doreen and Peter Hassan.

  Doreen and Peter have come to represent the best of Hyderabadi cuisine in New Delhi. Most imagine that Hyderabad’s
speciality is its dum biryani but thanks to Doreen, her guests know that our city’s exquisite cuisines also includes such vegetarian dishes as Tamatar ka Kut (page 38) and Mirchi ka Saalan (page 44). On a lucky evening, you get to taste Khubooli, yet another Hyderabadi speciality (page 132).

  Until 1978, every Irani cafe displayed the handsome and regal portrait of the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. When the Shah visited Hyderabad in the early 1970s, every Irani cafe owner lined up on the tarmac at Begumpet Airport to welcome him. They kneeled to greet him, and as he and his beautiful wife, Empress Farah, walked down the red carpet, the loyal Iranians kissed the ground on which their majesties had walked. After the revolution, however, the Shah’s portraits were taken down and replaced with even larger portraits of Ayatollah Khomeini. Even so, the Irani at the counter neither had an interest in politics back home nor the politics we would be discussing at his tables. He was happy swatting flies, collecting money and keeping an eye on his staff.

  Today, many associate Hyderabad’s cafes with biryani. In my student days, though, few cafes served food and fewer still served biryani. The Irani cafe was not a place you went to for a meal. Like European cafes, one went there for beverages and perhaps a snack. One such was a professor from Cambridge University, UK, who had been told that the best biryani in Hyderabad was to be found at an Irani cafe near Charminar, and so I took her there for lunch.

  The manager at the counter was flabbergasted and remonstrated us – ‘No place for zenana!’ The lady was willing to sit in the general section and to find the middle path, the manager immediately summoned a screen and placed it around the table!

  Doreen tells us how she and her friends would have runners called baharwalas to fetch snacks for them from a cafe because women would not be allowed in. At Cosmopolitan Cafe in Narayanaguda, however, things were different. An army of us student activists, boys and girls, would invade it and have long arguments in loud voices. The manager had to just put up with it.

  In a fit of nostalgia, I decided to visit an Irani cafe on a recent visit to Hyderabad. I drove to every street corner I knew but in vain. In my familiar childhood neighbourhood of Himayatnagar, Cafe Khayyam was gone. Cosmopolitan was still there, but no longer called a cafe, and now serving only ‘North Indian & Chinese’. At the Bashir Bagh crossroad, down the road from Nizam College, the cafe of our student days was no longer to be found. I drove all the way through Abids and on to Charminar, via Sultan Bazar and Jambagh, returning home through Moazamjahi Market and Nampally. None of the familiar cafes were there. In Himayatnagar, no one I spoke to knew there was once a Morine Cafe. In what seems to be an Americanization of the culture of eating out, Irani cafes have been replaced by places that call themselves ‘fast food’, ‘restaurant’ or even ‘hotel’. Not cafe. And almost every place display boards letting you know that biryani and haleem are on offer. Secunderabad’s Garden Cafe now calls itself Garden Restaurant. Shah Ghouse Cafe and Nimrah Cafe & Bakery, near Charminar, were the odd ones out. Their names figure on exotic tourist websites. Neither is worth a visit, sadly.

  Not surprisingly, there is a Chicago Cafe near the U.S. consulate in Begumpet. It serves authentic Irani chai and Osmania biscuits. But it also offers a south Indian meal and snacks like aloo-poori. I stepped into many of these newer places, wherever I could find parking space for my car, but I did not go back in time as I had hoped to. The lazy ambiance of the past was gone. It was ‘fast food’ alright. Everyone was in a hurry to order, eat, drink and go. There was no server shouting out the bill to the manager at the door. You got a piece of paper. There were no students sitting around tables and plotting revolutions. More than the change of a name, what saddened me was the change in culture. With the word ‘cafe’ gone, they no longer have the convivial atmosphere of one.

  My nostalgia punctured, I decided to make one last halt at a famous haleem place near my house in Banjara Hills. The name – Sarvi Take-Away – was not very inspiring but I decided to stop for a chai and samosa. The former was nothing special but the latter managed to do what I had hoped for – it took me back four decades.

  Dr Sanjaya Baru

  ONION SAMOSA

  INGREDIENTS

  1 cup beaten rice

  1 cup onions, chopped

  1 cup wheat flour

  1 cup plain flour

  1 bunch coriander leaves, chopped

  3 green chillies, chopped

  1 teaspoon chilli powder

  ½ teaspoon chaat masala

  ½ teaspoon cumin powder

  Water, as required

  Salt to taste

  Oil

  METHOD

  In a bowl, add both flours, salt, a teaspoon of oil and, using a little water at a time, knead a soft dough. Cover and keep aside to rest for 10 minutes.

  Add the chopped onions, coriander leaves and green chillies with poha, chilli powder, cumin powder and chat masala in another bowl. Mix well to combine.

  Mix a teaspoon of plain flour with water to form a paste in a separate smaller bowl.

  Take the prepared dough out of the bowl, and roll out thin circles, like rotis.

  Cook each roti lightly, on both sides.

  When all are done, cut each into a triangular shape.

  Apply the flour paste on one side. Place the mixture of onions in the centre and seal the edges.

  Heat the oil in a pan until very hot. Do not crowd the samosas as you should be able to turn each over. Deep fry until golden brown. Remove onto a large plate or platter lined with absorbent paper.

  EGG PUFFS

  INGREDIENTS

  To make the pastry

  250 gm plain flour

  20 gm butter

  10 gm sugar

  5 gm salt

  130 ml water

  Juice of half a lime

  To make the puff

  2 boiled eggs, hard boiled

  2 teaspoons oil

  Black pepper powder to taste

  Salt to taste

  METHOD

  TO MAKE THE PASTRY

  To the flour, add salt, sugar, water and lemon juice. Knead well and allow the dough to rest. Refrigerate for 20 minutes, covered with a damp cloth.

  Divide the butter into three equal parts. Store in a cool place but not in the fridge. You need the butter to stay soft so you can spread it.

  Roll dough into a thin rectangle.

  Take one part of the butter and spread it on two-thirds of the dough. Pick up the unbuttered section of the dough and fold the rectangle three times. Place on a plate, cover with a damp cloth and put it in the fridge for 15 minutes.

  Take the dough out, and roll it out again into a rectangle of similar size and thinness as the last time.

  Spread the second part of the butter on two-thirds of the dough. Fold as before into three, place on a plate, cover with a damp cloth and put it in the fridge for 15 minutes.

  Take the dough out and roll into a rectangle, as before. Spread the last part of the butter on the whole rectangle. Fold each end towards the middle, and fold into two. Return to the fridge, covered with a damp cloth for 15 minutes.

  Take the dough out and roll into a square. Cut the square into quarters.

  TO MAKE THE PUFF

  Take one quarter of the dough and place one egg half in the centre of the square. Sprinkle with pepper and salt to taste. Bring two of the opposite ends to the centre and seal, using a little water. The other two ends remain open.

  Once all four puffs are ready, brush each one with milk or water. Bake in a preheated oven at 220° Celsius for 20 minutes.

  If you have any leftover pastry, cut into thin strips and twist each in the centre, so it resembles a bow. Brush each strip with milk or water and bake along with the puffs. This is a good snack to have on hand.

  PALAK PAKORA

  INGREDIENTS

  1 cup gram flour

  12-15 medium-sized spinach leaves

  1 teaspoon red chilli powder

  1 teaspoon turmeric powder

&n
bsp; ¾ teaspoon carom seeds

  A pinch of baking soda

  A pinch of asafoetida

  Water as required, to make the batter

  Oil for frying

  Salt to taste

  Chaat masala to sprinkle on top

  METHOD

  Separate the spinach leaves and wash thoroughly. Lay out on clean cloth.

  Mix the gram flour, asafoetida with red chilli powder, turmeric powder, carom seeds and baking soda.

  Adding water a little bit at a time, create a silky-smooth batter.

  Heat oil in a deep pan until very hot. Dip spinach leaves one at a time into the batter and drop into the hot oil. Fry until beautifully golden brown in colour.

  Remove onto a large plate or platter lined with absorbent paper. If you like, you can sprinkle a little chaat masala on the pakoras before you serve.

  MIRCHI BHAJJIS

  INGREDIENTS

  1 cup gram flour

  8 to 10 long, fat green chillies

  1½ teaspoon carom seeds

  ½ teaspoon chilli powder

  ¼ teaspoon baking powder

  ¼ teaspoon chaat masala

  ¼ teaspoon baking soda

  A berry-sized ball of tamarind (the size

  of a gooseberry)

  Salt to taste

  Water as required, to make the batter

  Oil for frying

  METHOD

  Soak tamarind, ajwain seeds, salt, red chilli powder and chaat masala for 15 to 20 minutes in a bowl. Grind to a fine paste.

  Wash green chillies well, allow to dry and slit lengthwise. De-seed and stuff each chilli with one teaspoon of tamarind paste.

  Mix in the gram flour, salt and baking soda in a bowl. Adding a little water at a time, make a silky-smooth batter.

  Pour the oil in a pan and keep checking. Allow to heat well.

  Drop the chillies in but do not crowd the pan. You should be able to turn each one over. Fry each chilli until golden brown in colour.

  Remove onto a large plate or platter lined with absorbent paper. Either serve each chilli whole or slice into roundels.