From the Kayasth kitchen

Anoothi Vishal's latest book, Mrs LC's Table, traces Kayasth culture through its food

MRS LC'S TABLE
STORIES ABOUT KAYASTH FOOD AND CULTURE
Author: Anoothi Vishal
Publisher: Hachette India
Pages: 256
Price: Rs 350

There is a picture, black-and-white naturally, of a time when I must have been about a year and half. My mother and I are eating lunch. Presumably it is my father who is behind the camera. It must have been the three of us on an ordinary day - a small Kayasth family in Jaipur, where my father worked at that time.

The picture is telling in more ways than its grainy black-and-white print suggests. My mother and I are seated at the dining table, a proper meal has been laid out, and even I, all of one and a half, have been given an individual plate and cutlery, a napkin tucked under my chin. 'We were so particular about teaching you then about how to sit at a table and eat properly,' says my mother when we stumble upon the picture.

Regardless of the number of diners or the ordinariness of the occasion, dining at home has never been treated casually in my parents' home. Much of it has to do with the LCs' legacy. The emphasis on a 'complete meal', with at least two vegetables, a dal, roti, rice and condiments on the lunch table, comes down from their time and from generations before. For dinner, and if guests came calling, a meat dish was almost always added to this menu. This was the simplest Kayasth meal, and all homes mostly had similar standards for daily meals. But the emphasis was also on how you ate that meal, the manner of it. For the LCs, it was the bureaucratic Railways life they led that instilled in them the decorum and manners of minor English aristocrats, at least outwardly.

This was much after Independence - in the 1960s - but bureaucratic families like that of the LCs had clung on to notions of Englishness that had seeped into the Kayasth lifestyle at the turn of the twentieth century. This was when educated Kayasths became natural contenders for positions of some prominence opening up to the natives in administration, courts and education - in the civil services under the Crown, in private British companies such as the Railways and the Post and Telegraph services, or in the colleges and universities set up to further an English style of education.

While many Kayasths found employment in the courts of princely India (as Mrs LC's father had in the court of the Scindias), many other families gravitated to the newly established centres of learning in Rampur and Roorkee, Allahabad, Lucknow and Delhi. The men acquired degrees in engineering or English literature or history or law, and began to teach in the colleges and universities.

With this, certain elements became part of the Kayasth identity - whisky and bed tea, collections of fine porcelain and women's education in universities, English summer house-style architecture (with the addition of the all-important central courtyard, or aangan, of the Indian havelis, around which the rooms of the joint family were spread), distinctive pieces of furniture such as armchairs (the araamkursis were a regular feature of affluent Kayasth homes) and fusion dishes such as egg curry, nargisi kofte and makhane matar using the sweet 'English' green pea. And there was the dining table itself, on which these began to be served.

Before the dining table became a fixture in Kayasth homes, meals would be eaten on individual tables, sometimes in the kitchen, sometimes just outside it, with family members seated on low chowkis, or stools. That was the traditional way of dining. The first 'batch' comprised all the men in the family. Low tables were placed in front of each of them and food was served on thalis made of phool, an alloy. Only the very rich ate out of silver, though in most well-to-do families, water and milk were served in silver glasses. Even at the time that I was growing up, it was common for every child in the family to have her own silver glass with her name inscribed on it.

A maharaj, a Brahmin cook, and his wife presided over the kitchen, making fresh food and serving phulkas straight from the fire to the thalis of the diners. Each maharaj had his retinue of helpers, depending on the economic and social status of the employer's family, and each helper was assigned a task according to his caste and station in life. The maharaj would never deign to cook meat. Even though the Kayasth men were fond of their red meat, eating it almost on a daily basis, traditionally meat was never brought inside the 'pure' inner kitchen that was the domain of the maharaj and the household's womenfolk. In earlier days, meat had to be cooked by one of the 'lower-caste' kitchen hands, in the courtyard, in a separate vessel earmarked for this use.

YAKHNI PULAO

Some family recipes also use a fistful of saunf, or fennel seeds, in the whole garam masala used to flavour the yakhni (stock).

> Ingredients:

 

• 50-100g ghee
• 150g onions, chopped
• 50g garlic, chopped
• 25g ginger, chopped
• Salt to taste
• 500g goat meat, curry cut
• 4 glasses of water
• 500g rice
• 50g yoghurt
• Whole garam masala
• 4 black cardamoms
• 10 cloves
• 15-20 black peppercorns
• 10 green cardamoms
• 2 bay leaves
• 3 tbsp coriander powder
• Red chilli powder to taste
• 1 tbsp garam masala powder
• 1 tsp green cardamom powder
• 1 cup browned onions for garnish

> Method:

Add half of the ghee to a heavy-bottomed deep pan or kadhai. Add half the chopped onions, ginger and garlic in it. Add salt.

Now add the meat with about 4 glasses of water. Put the whole garam masala into the pot. Cover and cook till meat is partially (50 per cent) cooked, about 20-25 minutes. Remove the meat, strain and reserve the stock (yakhni).

In a separate pan or kadhai, add the remaining ghee and the rest of the cut onion, garlic and ginger. Saute they turn golden brown, add the boiled meat. Add coriander and red chilli powders and bhuno (saute) for about 15 minutes.

Add the yoghurt and saute for another 10 minutes till the meat is 80-85 per cent cooked.

Sprinkle the cardamom and garam masala powders for aroma.

Now, add washed Basmati rice and the reserved yakhni to the meat. Cover and let it cook on a low flame for about 15 minutes, till the rice is fully cooked.

Serve the pulao with a layer of browned onion on top.

CHARNAMRIT

Literally 'the elixir from the lord's feet', charnamrit - or panchamrit as it is also called because it involves the mixing of five uncooked ingredients - is a ritualistic drink. In the home of the LCs, it was made as part of every major puja as prasad. But it became a gourmet delight for the family. It had to be made in large quantities because all of us drank several glasses of it. Mrs LC herself made it. The ingredients were mixed together by andaaz, instinct, and since this was part of the prasad one couldn't taste to check. Miraculously, however, the andaaz never went wrong. The charnamrit, the ritualistic offering that it is cannot be made without a few drops of water from the river Ganga. Ganga jal, or water from the river, used to traditionally be stored in cans in homes for various cleaning and ritual purification purposes.

> Ingredients:

• 1kg milk, unboiled, cold
• 250g yoghurt
• 1tsp honey
• 250g powdered sugar
• A few tulsi leaves
• 5 types of mewa, or dried fruit
• 20g chironji
• 20g raisins
• 20g makhana
• A few dry coconut slivers
• 2 pieces of chuhara, a big raisin
• A few drops of Gangajal (water from the Ganga, considered to be holy)

> Method:

Mix everything together. Make sure that the sugar has dissolved. Chill and serve. 

Reprinted with permission from Hachette India