Into the Fire - Rajasthani Royal Cuisine
Laal Maas, Govind Gattas, Doodh ke Samose, Kaleji ka Raita, Khad Khargosh, Khargosh ki Mokal, Lahsoon ki Kheer… the aromas wafted over from the kitchens of our royal neighbours in Jaipur every day, bearing with them the gossamer heritage of warrior traditions, hunting expeditions, ceremonial repasts. More than 25 years later, when I see restaurants serve up yet another watered down version of Jungle Maas or Laal Maas, I wince. Rajasthan’s palace cuisines are in serious danger of surviving only as parodies of their former selves.
The apprehension grows as Rani Laxmi Chundawat, author of many books on Rajasthan and perhaps one of the oldest royals around at 94, holds forth on the scale and intricacy of the dishes of her youth. “Each king had at least 10 cooks in his personal kitchen, members of the Wahri caste in Marwar and of the Bhoi caste in Mewar. Breakfast comprised a minimum of 10 dishes. Each king had a ‘ration’ of mewa (dry fruits). They were also assigned rotis of a particular weight, which would be served with each meal. My father, the rawat of Deogarh, for instance, had a sawa ser ki roti, which was served to him and then distributed among his retainers and their families.”
A food conversation with Deogarh’s Shatrunjay Singh and his wife Bhavna is akin to opening a trunk full of old treasures. “Rajput cuisine,” Shatrunjay says, “traditionally uses a lot of garam masala and mirch because it was always accompanied by alcohol — you need to halve the quantum of spices for today’s tastebuds — but also because it is the product of rugged, rocky terrain, barren deserts, long days of relentless sun. Hunting was a popular royal pass-time, indicated by the plethora of recipes for whole partridges, pheasants, goose, chicken, deer, rabbit, wild boar and pigs. Khad Khargosh, for instance, required the rabbit to be marinated, wrapped in a kachha roti, packed into a gunny bag and buried in a pit, topped by a charcoal fire and mud, for a few hours. If you think that’s time-consuming, consider the Khargosh ki Mokal: The meat is boiled and shredded into long threads, a long, delicate process that no food processor can hope to equal. Even the cooking is labour-intensive, since masalas and ghee need to be added to it constantly while it bhunnos.”
Interestingly, the non-vegetarian food was mostly the preserve of the menfolk, from the hunting and gathering to the cooking and eating. As Yaduvendra Singh of Samode says, “My paternal grandmother was from Nepal, my maternal grandmother from Tripura and my mother was a princess from Gujarat. I grew up on food strongly influenced by all three regions. This kind of cultural osmosis was a reality across all the thikanas in Rajasthan. In fact, we still have kaleji cooked in raw mustard oil and aloo ka achaar, both Nepali dishes. For our hotel at Samode Palace, we have adapted and reinterpreted old recipes: We serve squid the way kaleji was made in mustard oil, with the masalas toned down, a thandai cheesecake and a masala chai crème brulee.”
(This story appears in the 25 March, 2011 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)