Whenever my friends want to eat puri-aloo, they invite themselves over to my home. In my hometown of Lucknow, this combination is found on every table, irrespective of class, community or faith. The dish is a reminder of the simplicity of the food of a city whose cuisine is often mistaken to be laced with spices, oil and meat.
Puri-aloo is not breakfast but a complete meal, often celebratory and cooked for festivals and special occasions. It is always made with multiple sides like khatta meetha kaddu, a pumpkin dish with jaggery and amchoor, sookha ghuiyan (colocasia), raita and pulao. Sometimes, especially in more affluent homes, with a special khoya-matar-makhane ki sabzi, a rich curry made with mawa (reduced milk), foxnuts and green peas. Unlike other places, the sabzis are thin and runny, the puris light and the accompaniments made with minimal spicing. It is a typical satvik combo made without onion and garlic.
Located in the heart of the Indo-Gangetic plain, Lucknow has always had access to fine local produce, be it grains, vegetables, fruit or dairy. This reflects in the city’s culinary culture where recipes honour ingredients—vegetables are added to meat, grains are converted into sabzis, flour is kneaded with ghee—and every dish stands out for its nuanced flavour, aroma and texture. Sagpaita, a dal made with winter greens like spinach and bathua added to split black urad, is one such example. The dal balances the sharpness of the greens and the tempering of garlic, asafoetida and whole red chillies lends layers of fragrance and flavour. Ghee ki sabzi, a recipe that uses the rich caramelised residue of malai (leftover after making ghee) to add both flavour and texture to a simple aloo-tamatar combination, is another example of playful use of textures that the kitchens of Lucknow are deft at.
With Unesco’s recognition of Lucknow as a Creative City of Gastronomy, the everyday food is finally drawing the attention it has long deserved—an affirmation of practices that have been preserved for generations by its home kitchens, neighbourhood vendors, and traditional cooks.
“The most important element in Lucknow’s food is the produce,” says Sheeba Iqbal, curator at Naimatkhana, a home-style restaurant. “In summer, gourds, jackfruit, brinjal and colocasia are made into dry sabzis to be eaten along with dal and rice for lunch, and added to meat to make salans like arbi-gosht or kathal gosht, eaten with soft rotis for dinner. In winter, local greens turn into sagpaita and root vegetables like turnips and beetroots are added to mutton to make shalgam gosht and chukandar gosht. The list is endless.”
In our vegetarian home, gourds are also turned into kebabs and koftas, root vegetables are cooked into raseydar sabzis (dishes with curry), and peas are turned into nimona (a dish made by grinding and cooking peas with potatoes). Bathua is stuffed into kachoris, and dill and fenugreek cooked together with freshly harvested potatoes becomes an earthy stir-fry enjoyed with arhar ki dal and kala namak chawal (a local variety of rice).
While every home cooks with similar ingredients, the recipes and spices differ from one community to another, and often between families. In ours, for example, most dry sabzis are cooked in a tempering of fenugreek seeds and whole dried red chillies, and in our neighbour’s, the tempering is cumin and green chillies. Same is true for dals: in some homes they are tempered with garlic and mustard oil, others use ghee and asafoetida, and the rest cumin and onion.
CHAAT, A FAVOURITE
As the sun sets on a busy day, chaatwalas start appearing at every corner, their carts filled with batashe, tikki, matar and a large pot of jaljeera. Like every other city in India, Lucknow loves its golgappas, only here we call it pani ke batashe and stuff them with boiled and mashed white peas rather than potatoes. The velvety texture of peas, the crisp batasha and the spicy paani is the holy trinity of chaat. There is no green chutney. The paani differs from cart to cart. Some use lemon and cumin, some tamarind and rock salt, others mint and raw mango, the variation lending every stall its distinct taste.
Another stand out element of the city’s chaat is the thick sweetened yogurt that is primarily made for dahi bada but also added on aloo ki tikki. Shallow fried in ghee until crisp on the edges, the aloo ki tikki is dressed with this yogurt, a dash of tamarind chutney, a sprinkling of roasted cumin, yellow chilli, and rock salt and served in a dried leaf bowl. It’s a medley of hot, cold, sweet, sour, crunchy and soft. In my experience, the aloo ki tikki has far more fans than mutton kebabs.
Matar ki tikki is another favourite. A patty made with boiled white peas, shallow-fried in ghee and topped with lime juice, ginger, rock salt and roasted cumin, the dish underscores the culinary philosophy of the city: less is more.
SWEET NUANCE
Doodh ki barfi, rabri, malai ki gilori, kulfi, malai makkhan — each sweet is more nuanced than the other.
“It is believed that the hawa-pani (air and water) of Lucknow is as responsible for the finesse of our mithais as the skill of our artisans,” says Amol Aggarwal of the 120-year old Netram Sweets in Aminabad. According to him, the choice of mithai depends not just on the season but also on the time of the day. “Winters are about makkhan malai and kali gajar ka halwa, while summer is for rabri and kulfi, just like mornings are for jalebi and evenings for imarti,” he adds.
A perennial favourite is doodh ki barfi. Made by simmering milk for hours and setting it in flat trays, this barfi is found in the smallest of shops and illustrates how good things don’t always come with a steep price tag. Makkhan malai, a delicate confection sold on the streets of the old city, proves this further. Prepared with full fat milk, hand churned for hours under the winter night skies, makkhan malai is the fat that rises into a froth over the milk. This froth is then collected, flavoured, sweetened and taken to the market at daybreak where it sells at as little as ₹20 a plate.
The pièce de résistance of the dessert universe remains the malai paan. It was first made for a nawab who was barred from having paan. Created with delicate sheets of malai, milk fat especially set for this purpose, filled with candied sugar and folded into dainty triangles that look like paan, the confection reflects the mastery of the city’s sweetmakers.
Just as making it is a craft, eating a malai paan is also an art—picking it with two fingers, placing it gently in your mouth and letting it dissolve on the palate not just allows you to enjoy its mellow sweetness but also appreciate the elegant, restraint and enduring legacy of Lucknow’s cuisine.
It is this mastery of hand, demonstrated as much by a homemaker as by a halwai or a chaatwala, that defines the city’s culinary identity—restrained, delicate and understated.
Recipe for Bathue ki Poori
Ingredients
1 cup cleaned, washed, boiled and drained bathua saag
2 cups atta
2-3 cloves of garlic (you can use cumin if you don't eat garlic)
1-2 whole red chillies
1/2 - 1 tsp salt
Remaining water of the bathua for kneading
Oil for tempering and frying
Method
In a pan or kadhai add 1 teaspoon mustard oil and let it smoke.
When smoking, add sliced garlic and sauté for 30 seconds (you can replace this with 1/2 tsp cumin). Next add the dry red chilli, broken into 2 pieces; stir for 30 seconds.
Once done, add bathua and stir until the mix dries up a bit. This will take about 4-5 mins on medium flame.
Let the saag cool to room temperature and then blend in a mixie or mash it with your hands. Blending will make it smooth and easy to knead but mashing with hands lends a great texture.
In a large thali, mix bathua, flour and salt. Knead the mix into a firm dough using very little bathua water if needed. You can add a tablespoon of oil if you like. Let the dough rest for 10-15 minutes.
In a kadhai or pan add mustard oil and smoke it. You may also use refined oil, peanut oil, or ghee. Shape the pooris and fry until nicely golden and fluffy on both sides.
Serve with fresh red chilli pickle and alu-tamatar ki sabzi.
Anubhuti Krishna writes on food, travel, culture and design.