Enter the drawing room of a three-storeyed bungalow at Jubilee Hills
and the first thing that greets you is the chime of grandfather’s clock
standing under the gaze of a huge glittering crystal chandelier hung
from a wooden ceiling that gives you a feel of sitting in some palatial wood cabin in a hill
station. A number of table chandeliers glow near different sets of sofas
and heavy teak tables. As the vision adjusts a tall frame in crisp
white kurta pyjama and skull cap enters saying salaam. His smile is
brighter than the diamond ring he is wearing. This is Nawab Mehboob Alam
Khan for you, doyen of the Hyderabad royalty. He is just back from his
kitchen supervising a sumptuous dinner that he is hosting at his house
for fifty people. Yes, Nawab Saab also dons the chef’s cap.
It’s not for nothing that he is known as the legend when it comes to
Deccan food. Now in his late sixties and having braved a by-pass surgery
his stature grows larger day by day when it comes to the knowledge of
Hyderabadi cuisine that he opens a treasure trove of. Sitting in the
plush sofa he checks the progress of the dinner with his staff and
continues the conversation, “What’s food? It’s four things: namak,
mirch, gehun, and chawal. These make the basic food. Somebody puts
wine. Someone puts cream and hence different cuisines emerge. The way of
cooking changes as the geography of kitchens change.” He tells that the
right preparation of haleem takes 11 hours! “The ghee, gosht and genhu
(wheat) needs to be rightly cleaned, ground and cooked. It’s the balance
that makes the difference. These days cooks use semolina so how can one
expect the right taste for a bowl of haleem when the ingredient is not
right!” he laments.
The clock announces 8:30. Nawab Saab
checks with his attendant about Doodh Ka Sherbet over the phone. “I use
charcoal smoke for the sherbet as it is prepared in a clay pot. It’s a
typical Muharram food savoured in Deccan. There won’t be many in the
city who know about this sherbet,” he informs.
For the dinner,
under his supervision were cooked delectable dishes like Safeda/
Sofiyani Biryani, Mirchi Kaa Saalan, Baghare Baigan, Chaal Kii Kebab,
Shermal, Baigan Ka Raita, Haleem, Murgh, Sheer Khorma and salad. And of
course his signature dish haleem with its cream colour texture topped
with onion rings fried golden in ghee.
Who has ever heard a Nawab
take to cooking? But Baba, as he is fondly called has been cooking for
the past forty years. And how exactly did he land in the kitchen? He
smiles and says, “As a young boy sometimes I’d peep into the kitchen and
help myself with some quick food. As I grew up I knew I loved my food.
Then, we had cooks who knew the golden secrets of our kitchens and were
old and dying. I decided I can learn the tricks from them if I have to
eat the same delicious royal food that nobody else cooks. And that’s how
I learnt cooking from them and till date I am cooking.”
When the
monarchy of Hyderabad ended in 1947 police action happened and it came
under Indian Union. “There was a large scale migration that never
happened in other parts of India. The best cooks moved, only a few
remained and those died. I was in London in 60s I started cooking there
also. In 1956 three districts Bidar, Raichur and Gulbarga ewent to
Karnataka and four went to Maharashtra. We studied their recipes and
cooked the food. The best part is that such food was cooked in pure
ghee. Even today we use pure ghee. I love cooking Mandi also especially
the way Yemenis relish eat. They dig a pit and fire huge logs into it.
Huge pot of rice with cardamoms and water is cooked and then on the top
lamb is put. A gunny sack which is wet is also put. Such food is not
cooked with oil. It is cooked in the heat. The shawarma of Middle East
is different from ours. They use camel meat while we use beef or mutton.
The real shawarma is marinated in onion juice,” he beams.
So,
what Deccan recipes has he restored? “Daasht. It’s kind of chicken of
Hyderabad. We use paste of browned onion, almond paste, chiraunji and
khus khus. For marinating we have special lagan, a shallow pan with
legs”, he shares.
And guess what, he’s collected heavy-bottomed
copper utensils that were used in the times of his forefathers even from
his great great grandfather. The crockery and cutlery of his family
suffices for 500 people. And he even has the scales. He has English
style serving dishes. Chhaal Kii Kebab made from minced meat which used
to be served in many royal Hyderabadi dinners and lunches. He himself
goes to the market for buying meat.
“Many people don’t know what
is silver screen in a meat-piece. Those who have the zauq and shauq of
good food only can understand what it is. If it’s not cleaned properly
the masala won’t cook in the meat-piece. Then there is Mukhdas a sausage
like Arabic dish we make which is meat-pieces wrapped in cleaned
intestines. Again its recipe is lost in many families,” he explains and
adds, “We make different kinds of Do Pyazaa like Tamatar Ka Do Pyaza,
Nimbu Ka Do Pyaza, Meetha Do Pyaza without adding sugar to it. Kachii
Imli Ka Do Pyaza, and even Starfruit Do Pyaza. We bhuno it so much that
nothing of onion remains in the dish. Dalcha is another dish we make
i.e., Deccan Ka Dalcha with three different kinds of pulses, tamarind
and meat chunks. These dishes are exquisite.”
A walk into his
kitchen and you get to see stocks of sauces, vinegars, oils, spoons,
spice-boxes and three burner stoves. This is the place he comes to
whenever he rustles some ingredients in a pot to cook his legendary
dishes that even food connoisseurs and chefs are fond of. But for
dinners like he hosted on a Sunday he gets temporary brick stoves made
at the backside of his bungalow on the floor. And the food is cooked on
huge wood logs. We take a walk and find the cinders still glowing red.
The smell of wood-smoke mixed with food cannot be ignored.
He
still has buffaloes whose milk is used for cooking. “The kind of fodder
that animals eat has its effect on the taste and texture of food,” he
tells us.
He has been trotting all over the world and has
collected rugs from countries as far as Uzbekistan, Chechnya, Iran,
Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Turkey, Kazakhstan Pakistan and
Iraq. He loves collecting knives. He has built his collection over the
past 50 years. And these are not big knives but small, foldable ones.
He
shares, “You don’t get pure Shah Zeera outside Hyderabad. It grows only
in Afghanistan. What is sold outside the city is not Shah Zeera, it’s
something else. When I’d gone to Afghanistan, local merchant told me
that 90 per cent of Shah Zeera that is grown in their country is used
in kitchens of Hyderabad, they use only the rest 10 per cent.”
So
does travelling enrich his food experiences? “I don’t have a club life.
Travelling always enriches experiences. I taste the food wherever I go.
This tells which food is different from what. I find that pulao or
pilav as it is called is cooked in many countries. The taste and
ingredients differ from land to land. You see the basic is rice and some
condiments.”
The director of Hyderabad Deccan Cigarette Factory,
popularly known as Golkonda Cigarette Factory, and honorary secretary of
prestigious Anwar-Ul-Uloom Group of Institutions starts his winter
breakfast at home with Daal-e-Maash topped with ghee tadka and roti.” He
is fond of rural Deccani food. But finds a lot of refinement in
Hyderabad food. “Twenty quintals of biryani I cooked for my son’s
wedding and 1,200 Kg fish and 3,000 Kg chicken. We make certain foods in
clay-pots. You cannot cook the same on a gas stove. Western cooking is
dependent on the sauces. Ours is masala-based that needs to be cooked
for a longer period. Country chicken is better suited for our kind of
cooking. The skin of country chicken stands the heat and spices. It
takes one hour and a half, and then the masala will develop its own
taste. You cannot do it with broiler chicken. For restaurants broilers
is heaven-sent item. I cook Anglo-Indian food also like Chicken Roast. I
do pot roast in old English style,” he tells us.
He reminisces
the time when he would relish pomfret at Taj Bombay when he used to
visit Bombay as a little boy along with his father Nawab Shah Alam Khan.
“They removed their signature dish which is sad,” he laments.
After
the sumptuous dinner that he lovingly served to his guests he sits and
talks about the time when he was invited to prepare a feast for Prince
Agha Khan who didn’t want a lot of ingredients to be included in his
food platter.
“Two sets of dinner were prepared under my
guidance; one for the guests, one for him. It so happened that he ended
up having the guests’ food while the food prepared only for him remained
untouched,” he chuckles reminiscing. He has many food stories up his
sleeve and before we take his leave we ask him if he’s going to pen a
book. He thinks and responds, “Now I think I will.”
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