"WHEN
YOU THINK OF HYDERABAD,
it’s the mouth-watering flavours of Dum
Biryani that come to mind. But the
richness of Deccani cuisine cannot be
limited to a few dishes. Biryani is only
the beginning of a unique experience
that can bring the human palate to the
brink of ecstasy,” says Shahnoor Jehan,
the 62-year-old chef behind the
home-cooking venture Khassa, which
focuses on recreating the unique and
nearly extinct Hyderabadi dishes of
yore.
Jehan had
always loved to cook these old Hyderabad
delicacies for her family and friends,
but in 2019, she started Khassa after
much encouragement from them. Since
then, she’s gained a widespread
following for her meticulous
reconstruction of ancestral recipes from
across Hyderabad. Jehan’s grandmother —
the late Muzaffar Unissa Begum — was
connected to the family of the Sultan of
Yemen; Jehan’s food therefore is an
amalgamation of Mughal, Turkish and
Arabic cuisines in addition to
Hyderabadi influences.
Her repertoire
spans popular dishes like Haleem, Rann
Ghosht, Kairi Ka Dopayaza as well as
signature dishes that are rarely
available elsewhere: Kuzi (leg of mutton
cooked with almonds, saffron, and spices
like black pepper) and Tamatar Ka Kut (a
rich tomato gravy with mild temperate
spices, topped with boiled eggs). Then
there’s the Kulthi Ka Kut (a thick,
dal-like gravy made from horse gram and
garnished with boiled eggs), Shab-Degh
(mutton with turnip) and the Afandi
Salan (a mutton dish in which the meat
is sliced, filled and cooked with
saffron).
PAST
PERFECT
Jehan has fond
memories of the kitchen of her childhood
home. “During my school days, I remember
that in spite of having a gas stove, we
also had a traditional stove (a separate
place for a woodfire and a
“phukni”/blower). At the time, I used to
feel the process of cooking must be long
and impractical.” With their
aristocratic lineage, the family had
many helpers, but Jehan’s mother was
insistent on preparing meals from
scratch herself. Recipes were closely
guarded. “For example, even to make cold
coffee for a huge gathering she had a
technique unlike any seen today,”
recounts Jehan. “I haven’t had such
delicious cold coffee ever,
afterwards.”
Unlike the
lost cold coffee, several other dishes
are being restored from the depths of
obscurity through Jehan’s efforts at
Khassa. A case in point is the Dam Ki
Machli (fish), made very carefully and
handled delicately. The dish is made
only on burning coal, but the way coals
are placed defines the taste of the
dish. Mutabaq, another old resurrected
recipe, is a slow-cooked dish with very,
very — Jehan emphasises — thin slices of
rotis that form the dish. A frequently
made dish, albeit not in its original
avatar, is the Marag. Jehan is insistent
that the original version had big pieces
of mutton with a lot of fat and no oil
or ghee. She explains, “It should only
be the fat of the mutton and it is
served with ‘masube’ — the roti for it.
But today, except for very few old
Hyderabadi families no one has heard of
it!”
TRADITIONAL
TOUCH
Traditional
dishes are not easy to make and require
elaborate preparation. The marination
alone makes these dishes very labour and
time intensive, and this is why Jehan
operates only on a pre-order basis. For
instance, one of her sought-after
desserts, Badam Ka Kund, takes about
four hours of prep time for the
ingredients, and another four hours to
cook. Namish, a milk-and-cardamom drink
made specially for winters, has to be
prepared overnight. The cooking time for
Dam Ki Machli is at least three hours.
Spices are ground by hand. Food is
cooked using the dum technique. Only the
finest cuts of meat will do.
Jehan is very
particular about using the “right type
of mutton” in her recipes. The Telangana
Potla (live lamb) used should be not
more than eight kg, and should be
healthy. Specific dishes need specific
parts. For example, Mutton Dalcha
requires seene ka gosht (chest
pieces only) and the meat needs to be
chopped in a specific way.
More than the
ingredients it is the method of cooking
that differentiates the dishes. Jehan
adds, “We source most of the ingredients
from local Hyderabadi markets, except
for the dry fruits — those are sourced
from Iran — and zafran from Spain.”
Jehan is firm on keeping the home-cooked
identity of Khassa intact rather than
turning it into a commercial
establishment. The minimum number of
people she cooks for is 8-10, with a
maximum of 50.
Each morsel of
Jehan’s meals speaks to a way of life
that is on the wane, if not vanished
entirely. Khassa is a throwback to the
type of cooking that revered flavours
and rewarded fortitude — a type of
cooking that we now experience only
through the efforts of culinary soldiers
like Jehan.
***
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