This tasting menu is a culinary journey through Punjab
A six-course meal at Ikk Panjab in Delhi traces the history of the cuisine from the Indus Valley Civilisation to Partition, highlighting a diversity of dishes, including, of course, butter chicken
Food historian and anthropologist Dr Kurush Dalal loves a good butter chicken. But, to think that Punjabi food begins and ends with the creamy, tomato-based dish, or at best dal makhani, he points out, is a grave mistake.
It is with this intention of breaking stereotypes associated with Punjabi food that he and the team at Ikk Panjab in Delhi will host the Provenance Dinner later this week. The six-course tasting menu will trace the evolution of Punjabi cuisine, from the Indus Valley civilisation through invasions and till Partition.
If not for the five rivers flowing through undivided Punjab, the region would have been an arid landscape. “Punjabis, by sheer dint of hard work, have turned it into a land of grain, ghee, milk and prosperity. So, the story of Punjabi cuisine is also a story of blood, sweat and tears. It is a story of people who are very closely linked to the soil and who have adapted every time a curveball has been thrown at them," says Dalal.
Apart from the Partition, which had a deep impact on the food traditions, foreign conquests, the Green Revolution and even Emergency played a role. Take butter chicken, a dish created by refugees to use leftover tandoori chicken. Or, say maah ki daal, which Dalal explains was created out of an “incredible sense of frugality", with women using leftover hot coals from making tandoori rotis at the sanjha chulha (community oven) to slow-cook dal overnight. The menu also doubles up as an ode to winter with the liberal use of warming ingredients such as ghee, jaggery, sesame and mustard.
Barley or jau, “the original grain of India", as Dalal calls it, is the mainstay of one course, which is inspired by the Indus Valley Civilisation. Warm barley and sesame porridge will be served along with barley flatbread. “Today we speak about sarson da saag and makai ki roti, but makai (corn) is not even 200 years old. It was introduced by the British and farmers realised they were getting better yields from makai. The Harappans cultivated barley. Barley also finds a mention in the Rig Veda," he says.
For the tandoor course, there will be aubergine roasted in mini tandoors, and roasted quail or bater. Diners can also expect sarson da saag and Kasur-style river fish from undivided Punjab. A slow-cooked rajma and tender lamb simmered in a tomato gravy will highlight the impact of colonial trade on the local palate. Of course there will be butter chicken. Aate ka halwa, and garam badam doodh and jalebi will put a sweet ending to the hearty meal.
There will also be craft cocktails by mixologist Sushil Pant using cardamom, jaggery, peanut, tomato and cumin.
The Provenance Dinner will be held on 30 October at Ikk Panjab, Greater Kailash 2, New Delhi.
Deepali Dhingra is a Delhi-based culture writer.
topics
