by Sadia Dehlvi
Raan Musallam Masala
1½-2 kg raan
2-3 lemons
1 kg curd
4 whole kachri, crushed or 2 tsp kachri powder
250-300 gm raw papaya, peeled and pulped
2 tsp garlic paste
6-8 cloves
1½-2 tsp red chilli powder
½ cup oil
1-2 tsp black pepper, freshly ground
Salt to taste
Use a fork or sharp knife to make small incisions on the raan. To make it more manageable, you could make a deep cut on the bend of the leg and fold it.
Marinate the raan with salt, kachri, pepper, red chilli powder and lemon juice. Refrigerate for a day or two. A few hours before cooking, marinate the raan again with curd, garlic and papaya.
Heat oil and add cloves. Now place the raan in a large utensil that accommodates it and leave on low flame for about an hour till done. Flip the raan once to ensure even browning. If required, add a little water to keep the raan from burning. The curd and other spices form a little masala, so spread it around the raan in the serving platter.
Kaleji – Liver Curry
Kaleji for lunch is another Eid al Azha tradition, specially since it cooks quickly. This is prepared with the basic salan recipe. Generally, 3 to 4 teaspoon of dried kasuri methi leaves are added to the kaleji a few minutes before turning off the flame.
Fried Mutton Chops
1 kg mutton chops
2 tsp cumin seeds, crushed
2 tsp garlic paste
1 tsp red chilli powder
2 beaten eggs
Breadcrumbs
Oil for frying
Salt to taste
Marinate the mutton chops with the cumin, salt, chilli powder, and garlic paste for a few hours. Heat oil, add marinated chops and leave on low flame for 30 to 35 minutes till they are almost done. If needed, add a little water so that the chops don’t burn. Now, dip the chops in beaten eggs, coat with breadcrumbs and deep fry. Serve with fresh green chutney or tomato ketchup.
Masala Chops with Thick Gravy
1 kg mutton chops
Marination
4 kachri or 2 tsp kachri powder
250 gm curd
2 medium-sized onion, minced
1 tsp red chilli powder
½ cup raw papaya, peeled and pulped
4 tbsp oil
Salt to taste
Mix all the ingredients and marinate the mutton chops overnight or for at least 4 to 6 hours. Heat oil and cook the chops on low flame till they are tender. Masala chops are served with roti.
Meetha – Sweet Dishes
Halwas were rarely cooked at home, they mostly came from reputed shops. In winter, we often had homemade andey ka halwa. Sometimes Apa Saeeda made harira with rava. She added some milk so it became more like a porridge. Amongst the sweet dishes made at home were firni, kheer, shahi tukdey and sevaiyan.
Firni and Kheer
Firni and kheer are similar, except for the texture. In firni the rice is danedar whereas kheer is made with whole rice. Kheer is thicker and sets well after cooking whereas firni does not.
Kheer
2 litre milk
½ cup basmati rice, preferably broken
4-6 cardamoms crushed
10-12 almonds, peeled and finely sliced (optional)
10-12 pistachios, finely sliced (optional)
1½ cup sugar or to taste
½ tsp kewra water
Few strands of saffron (optional)
Edible silver leaves (optional)
Kheer is best made with broken basmati rice. Soak it for 35 to 45 minutes. If using regular basmati rice, then lightly handcrush it after soaking it. Meanwhile, bring the milk to boil and then lower the flame to the minimum. Now add the rice and continue cooking uncovered for almost an hour till the milk reduces to less than half. Keep stirring so that no lumps are not formed. After the rice is completely cooked, add sugar and keep stirring till you have the right consistency. If you wish to add saffron, now is the time to add it. Soak the saffron in a tablespoon of warm milk and add to kheer. Lastly, add kewra water just before turning off the flame.
Pour kheer into a serving bowl or in clay bowls and leave to set. Garnish with chandi key warq, edible silver leaves, and slivers of almond and pistachio.
Shahi Tukda – Royal Bread Pudding
4 bread slices, white
1 litre milk
¼ tsp kewra
4 green cardamoms, crushed or powdered
½ cup desi ghee
½ cup sugar or to taste
Few strands of saffron (optional)
Saffron colouring
Sliced almonds and pistachios (optional)
Edible silver leaves (optional)
Slice the bread pieces in the middle into halves. You can remove the crust but it is not necessary. Deep fry the slices to golden brown and keep aside.
Add cardamoms to milk and put it to boil. Ideally use a wide utensil for the milk so that when bread slices are added later, they spread nicely. Reduce the milk to almost half so it thickens. Add the sugar to the milk and let it dissolve. Add saffron colouring or saffron to the milk. Now add fried bread slices to the milk and leave on low flame for around 15 to 20 minutes. The bread slices will absorb all the milk. Do not use a spoon and do not cover the utensil as the slices will break. Just turn the utensil around a bit. Add kewra just before turning off the flame.
Take the slices out with a large flat spoon and place on the serving platter. Garnish with pistachio and almond slivers. Lastly, to make the dish look royal, dress it with a few edible silver leaves.
Zarda – Flavoured Rice
½ kg sella or basmati rice
8 green cardamoms
8 cloves
½ cup desi ghee
1½-2 cup sugar or to taste
¼ tsp saffron colour powder
1 tsp kewra
2 tbsp curd (optional)
250 gm khoya, grated or handcrushed
Few strands of saffron or saffron colouring (optional)
For zarda, the sella variety of rice is preferred over basmati as the latter breaks easily. I prefer using the fragrant basmati.
If using basmati rice, soak the rice for 45 minutes. Sella rice needs to be soaked for 3 to 4 hours prior to cooking. Boil 5-6 glasses of water with 4 cloves and 4 crushed cardamoms. Add a little saffron colouring to the water. Add rice to the boiling water. Once the rice is completely cooked, strain it and keep it aside. In another saucepan, heat ghee and the remaining cloves and cardamoms. Let them crackle for a minute or two and add the sugar along with half a cup of water to prepare the chaashni, sugar syrup. Keep stirring till the sugar dissolves completely and the syrup thickens. You could add a little curd to the syrup as it prevents the rice from turning hard.
Now add the rice to the syrup, mix well and cook uncovered on high flame till the syrup has been absorbed and dried. Add khoya to the rice and cook covered on minimum flame for about 10 to 15 minutes. Add kewra to the rice just before switching of the flame,
When serving, garnish with murabba, preserved cherries, almond and pistachio slivers. If you like, add some fried or roasted almonds and cashews. Silver warq placed over zarda gives it the final royal touch.
Pickles and Chutneys
Apart from a few chutneys and achaar that go with specific dishes, Dilliwalas rarely have pickle on their table. Arq-e-nana chutney is enjoyed with haleem, shalgam ka achaar with matar pulao and the lime achaar aids digestion.
Arq-e-Nana Chutney – Sweet Sour Chutney
In Arabic, arq means distillate and nana means mint. Earlier it was used in making this chutney. Over the years, it has been replaced by glacial ascetic acid, an organic compound with a chemical formula.
½ kg raw green mango, peeled
1-2 tsp Nigella seeds (kalonji)
4-6" ginger piece cut into fine long strips
15-20 small garlic pods, whole
½ tsp red chilli powder
6-8 red c
hillies, broken into small pieces
1 cup sugar or to taste
100 gm raisins
1 tbsp of glacial ascetic acid
100 gm chaaron maghaz – melon, pumpkin and watermelon seeds (optional)
A few dates, sliced into strips (chuarey)
Salt to taste
Soak the dried dates for a few hours and cut into fine long strips. Slice the mango into small, fine 1" strips or grate it. Some prefer using small, whole pods of garlic. You can use some of it sliced lengthwise into strips and some whole. Except for sugar and ascetic acid, boil all other ingredients together in 3-4 glasses of water for 15 to 20 minutes on low flame. Then add sugar and cook for another 5 to 10 minutes. After it cools, add a tablespoon of glacial ascetic acid. You can refrigerate the chutney and enjoy it with pulaos, haleem and other dishes.
Neembu Achaar – Lemon Pickle
I remember Amma storing achaar in large martabaan, ceramic jars. She would wait for the lemon trees in the garden to bear fruit and then made pickle using just lemons and salt. She had the lemons scraped on a stone slab, and then preserved in lemon juice squeezed from other lemons. Lahori namak, rock salt, was crushed and added to the whole lemons and lemon juice. These were put out in the sun to mature. More rock salt was added to it during the next few following days. The salt preserved the pickle and crusts over the lemons. When we had stomach ailments, Amma gave us a small piece of this lemon pickle for its medicinal purpose. It is said that the older the pickle, the better it becomes.
Ammi recalls that when Amma had once left Delhi on a vacation, she decided to clean the kitchen and pantry thoroughly. On finding the lemon pickle with salt crust all over it, she mistook it for fungus and threw away the pickle. When Amma returned and learnt about the missing pickle, she threw up her hands in despair. She told Ammi that she had thrown away a priceless fifteen-year-old pickle! Making it is rather simple.
12 lemons, whole
12 lemons, juiced
Rock salt (Lahori namak)
It is a tedious job to scrape the lemons on stone, so just use lemons with thin skin. Keep a dozen lemons whole and extract juice from the remaining dozen. Put the whole lemons in a glass jar with the lemon juice and rock salt. Leave this mixture in the sun for a month or so. Keep adding a little salt every second or third day for around a fortnight. When the lemons become soft, your pickle is ready.
Shalgam Pani Achaar – Turnip Water Pickle
1 kg turnips, peeled
3-4 tbsp coarse red chilli powder (kutti lal mirch)
4 tbsp garlic paste
200 gm mustard seeds (rai)
Salt to taste
Chop the turnips into two and then make ½" thick slices. Boil them with 5-6 glasses of water. Turn off the flame after one boil and then strain the turnips. Meanwhile, grind the mustard seeds to a coarse texture in a mixer. Now spread the turnips on a large tray and marinate with mustard powder, red chilli powder, garlic paste and salt. Ideally, the boiled turnip slices should be covered with a muslin cloth and put out in the sun for a day or two. With the air so polluted, I don’t do that anymore. I just leave them in the kitchen for a few hours. It is best served with matar pulao.
Now boil around a litre of fresh water and let it cool. Put the turnip slices in a glass jar and pour the cooled water over them. Keep the jar in the sun for a week or two as it takes time for the khataas, tanginess, to set in. Refrigerating the pickle makes it last for a few months. Shalgam ka achaar is best enjoyed with all varieties of pulaos. This is a healthy, water-based preserve.
Lasan Lal Mirch Chutney – Garlic Red Chilli Chutney
15-20 garlic pods, peeled
6-7 red chillies, whole
¼ onion, chopped
½ tsp cumin seeds
Salt to taste
Grind all the ingredients in a blender. This is a hot, spicy chutney, often served with biryani, shaami kebab and pakora.
About the Book
In Jasmine and Jinns, Sadia Dehlvi weaves tales of Delhi’s ancient past with stories of her growing up in the city. As part of a large and hospitable family, she learned early the skill and pleasures of entertaining at home. In this lovingly crafted volume of food and memories, she recalls the conversations and carefully prepared dastarkhwan that enriched her childhood.
She takes us inside her home and the kitchens of other Dilliwalas, sharing with us origin stories and recipes of many classic dishes, including biryani, qorma, kofta, shaami kebab and kheer. In addition to these, there are recipes for seasonal specialities and festivals. These home-cooked dishes are a distillation of Delhi’s old cuisines and a reminder of how rich and historically layered our daily lives are.
From home to bazaar, Sadia takes us through the famous by-lanes of the old city to show us where the best jalebi, daalbiji, aloo poori, dahi bhalla, nihari and mithai continue to be served. In her telling, and the photographs that accompany her words, the city she knows so well comes alive in all its magical, delicious complexity.
About the Author
Sadia Dehlvi is an author and columnist. Her family name – Dehlvi – reflects their centuries-old association with Delhi. She comes from a family of writers who published several Urdu and Hindi magazines and books. Her grandfather, Hafiz Yusuf Dehlvi, founded Shama in 1938, an iconic Urdu film and literary monthly.
For almost forty years, Dehlvi has been writing on women, minorities, Islamic spirituality and Delhi’s heritage and culture. She is the author of Sufism: The Heart of Islam and The Sufi Courtyard: Dargahs of Delhi, both published by HarperCollins. She lives in New Delhi. Her website is sadiadehlvi.com
The Dehlvi family made Delhi their home several hundred years ago. Sadia interlaces stories and memories of the city and its people, taking you inside its homes and kitchens, as well as the bazaars of the walled city. She shares recipes, many of which have not travelled outside of Dilliwalas’ homes, and offers lived and real insights into the life and spirit of this ancient city through its changing customs, manners, cuisine and seasons.
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First published in India in 2017 by
HarperCollins Publishers India
Copyright © Sadia Dehlvi 2017
P-ISBN: 978-93-5264-436-0
Epub Edition © January 2018 ISBN: 978-93-5264-437-7
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Sadia Dehlvi asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
The views and opinions expressed in this book are the author’s own and the facts are as reported by her, and the publishers are not in any way liable for the same.
All rights reserved under The Copyright Act, 1957. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins Publishers India.
Cover design & illustration: Shaaz Ahmed
Photographs: Omar Adam Khan
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