Rajmata`s Cookbook

24
CULTURE CAULDRON
ROYAL KITCHENS
Rajmata’s Cookbook
It’s fusion at its best. Gayatri Devi blended the
flavours of royal kitchens across the country with
personal anecdotes in ‘Royal Cuisine’. But these are
far from being self-indulgent accounts of a
privileged life, says Vikram Doctor
COOKBOOK that starts with the frank admission, “Although I am not a gourmet or
particularly fond of food…” does not augur
well. And it’s probably safe to say that few
people are likely to buy the two cookbooks
compiled and inspired by Maharani Gayatri Devi of
Jaipur for regular home cooking.
But that was hardly their purpose: Gourmet’s Gateway
(1999), her first, was an extension of her biography, A
Princess Remembers (1995), and was a way to remember
the people she had known, at whose tables she had eaten. And Royal Cuisine of Indiadocumented the traditional
recipes, practices and style of the Special Kitchen of
Jaipur’s City Palace, as recorded by Shri Jaswant Singh
Rathore, the nayab or chief of the kitchen from around
the time of Gayatri Devi’s marriage into the Jaipur family,
and very ably edited into book form by Dharmendar
Kanwar, who also edited Gourmet’s Gateway.
I have to say that I approached both books with scepticism. I have very little patience for the aura, the airs and
graces that people still insist on attaching to Indian royalty. It’s absurd to have people claiming privileges or being
ascribed to them (since, to be fair, the worst practices tend
to come from those attached to the erstwhile royals
rather than the royals themselves), or attaching titles like
‘Dewan’ to their name simply because some
local chieftain ancestor sold out with great
alacrity to the British. And in terms of food it
works itself out in dishes whose richness is in
inverse proportion to their interest, and
which seem designed solely for those tired
events known as restaurant food festivals,
A
Food & Flavour
GARAM MASALA
VIKRAM DOCTOR
which is the only place their feature these
days. Their influence and value to Indian
cooking in general tends to be low.
And yet I have to say, these books (and
Digvijaya Singh’s Cooking Delights of the Maharajahs), and the food references in Gayatri
Devi’s memoir, did show me why the world of
royal food is of some interest. The palace
kitchens could preserve older styles of recipes and use ingredients that are just not practicable in most kitchens today. Even the most lavish restaurant food festival, I think,
might balk at using kasturior the musk extracted from the
gland of the male musk deer, which was used to perfume
dishes like the Pulao Rajsi that’s given in Royal Cuisine. I
can though imagine some resourceful home cooks I
know making the bhang patties that go into the same
book’s Kaifi Pulao.
Whether practicable or not, these are usages that
should be recorded, as are the many recipes for game. The
shikarthat supplies so many of the recipes is, quite correctly, banned (though apparently that doesn’t stop some
politicians featuring it on their private menus), but it’s not
impossible that farmed venison and boar could become
available some day, especially if its potential as a valueadded rural product is recognised as it has been in the
West. And the patronage of courts did result in new dishes being invented — palace chefs would do their best to
find ways to excite the jaded palates of their masters, resulting in dishes like the ultra soft galouti kebab of Lucknow, reportedly invented for a toothless nobleman.
Many rulers took a keen interest in their court’s food, be-
Hopes ride
high on
Love Aaj Kal
Leena Mulchandani
MUMBAI
WITH the impasse between multiplex
owners and films producers over the
issue of revenue sharing being resolved, Bollywood has seen a spate of
big-budget films like New York, Kambakkht Ishq and Luck. The latest is Eros
International’s Love Aaj Kal, which was
released on Friday.
Occupancy for the film was as
high as 90% on the day of the release
with advance booking for the weekend at 25%. Theatre owners expect
to end the weekend with occupancy
rates of 75-80%. Love Aaj Kal, made
on a budget of around Rs 50 crore,
has been released in 1,800 screens
across the world. The producers of
the film inked marketing tie-ups
with ICC T20 World Cup, Shoppers
Stop and Bajaj Allianz.
Multiplexes have allotted a reasonably large number of shows for the film
— the most for a film released in 2009.
Theatre owners were also able to have
more shows for the film as its running
time is just over two hours.
“Occupancy rates have still been in
excess of 90% for Friday,” says Devang
Sampat, senior V-P, Cinemax. Love Aaj
Kal has been getting mixed reviews so
far and theatre owners are optimistic
about the weekend collections.
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clandestinely in restaurants like Firpo’s in Calcutta.
A major kingdom like Jaipur was a magnet for people
across India, and in Gourmet’s Gateway Gayatri Devi
records recipes from the Kashmiris, Parsis, Muslim and
South Indian families who lived there, like that of Sir VT
Krishnamachari, the prime minister of Jaipur or Ahmed
Currimbhoy, the education minister. And because the
Maharajah was at pains to be on good terms with the Nationalist movement, they also met many Congress leaders, like Sarojini Naidu whose notable daughter Padmaja
contributed several recipes. Later on, Gayatri Devi’s involvement with the Swatantra Party brought her into
contact with people through Rajaji — the party leader —
most surprisingly, MS Subbulakshmi, whose husband T
Sadashivam edited the Swatantra Party’s newspaper.
Subbulakshmi’s recipe for then-kuzhal, a delicious murukku-like savoury made of urad dhal, is the only one I’ve
ever seen from the great singer!
Gayatri Devi’s involvement with the Swatantra Party
would eventually lead to the scandal of her imprisonment
by Indira Gandhi during the Emergency. She records how
the Tihar Jail authorities did their best to make things easy
for her in terms of food and living conditions, and friends
from around the world flooded her with gifts. Christmas,
1975 found her alone in jail eating caviar
sent by a British friend — possibly the only
time its been eaten in Tihar! She also received a Christmas cake from the famous
British food store Fortnum & Mason,
which she gave to the European prisoners, mostly hippies in on drugs charges.
The day she was finally released she received a large parcel of cheese, prompting
her son Joey to joke, “I hope they do not
find out you are out of jail as we won’t get
any more goodies.”
Anecdotes like that add to the charm
of her memoir, and make what could
have been a self-indulgent account of a
privileged life into something affecting
and accessible. For all her status and
reputation as one of the world’s most
beautiful women, Gayatri Devi was a
trooper, able to stand up for herself
ar
by Dharmendar Kanw
when she had to. For all her professed
Picture courtesy: Royal Cuisine Of India
lack of knowledge in cooking, when
would experience and learn how to make it really she had to deal with the chaos of trying to economise on
authentically. She took one of them to Alfredo’s, a famous kitchen operations in Jaipur during World War II, she
restaurant in Rome, “because she wanted him to under- got down to it. Which was hardly easy given the extravstand what Alfredo’s lasagne tasted like”. Gayatri Devi, agance and laxity with which they had been run in the
too, was expected to taste everything, with her mother past, with the best foods being ordered from abroad and
convincing her to eat frog’s legs by telling her they were everyone helping themselves to them, sometimes even
to serve them back to the Maharajah as special luxuries
baby chickens!
Food also served a useful role in court life as a way to ordered for his benefit.
The showdown came over crème brulée. Her husband
make diplomatic gestures and set up meetings. Gayatri
Devi’s mother had defied her parents to marry the Raja of had invited one of his ministers and his wife for a simple
Cooch Behar, and her mother cut off all contact with her. dinner for just the four of them. The chef, clearly formiBut a few years later when she wanted to re-establish con- dable and used to getting his way, ordered two pounds of
tact she did it “by sending a Maratha cook to Cooch Behar cream for the crème brulée. He hadn’t realised that the
to provide the special Baroda dishes that she was sure her new Maharani had been to a Swiss finishing school
daughter must be missing.” Food was also how Gayatri where they had learned about such things: “I pointed
Devi first met her future husband. When her family was out that so much cream would spoil the dish, but he
vacationing down South, in Ooty, the young Maharajah replied grandly that for the Maharaja no amount of
of Jaipur, then 13 years old, was also there and thorough- cream was too much. When I insisted, he reluctantly
ly tired of the English food that his guardians made him gave in, and from then on all our nine cooks — four for
eat. Knowing of Gayatri Devi’s mother’s reputation as a English food, five for Indian — paid attention to my orhostess, he invited himself over for lunch on the plea that ders.” If Mrs Gandhi had known about the crème brulée,
he was desperate for an Indian meal! Years later their perhaps she might have realised she had no chance of
courtship, again not approved of by Gayatri Devi’s moth- intimidating Gayatri Devi.
er because he already had two wives, had to be conducted
vikram.doctor@timesgroup.com
cause they realised that culinary excellence was one way
to stand out among the many kingdoms of India.
But the one area I find Gayatri Devi’s books most interesting is the way it shows the cross fusion that took place in
royal kitchens. Daughters-in-law are always a way for
new foods to enter Indian kitchens, and the palaces did
their matchmaking across the breadth of India. Gayatri
Devi herself was an extreme example of this: her father
was from Cooch Behar in eastern India; her mother was
a Maratha princess from Baroda in the West, while her father’s first wife had been a princess from Tanjore in the
South. By marrying into the north-west Indian kingdom
of Jaipur, Gayatri Devi brought all these influences with
her, and Royal Cuisinerecords Cooch Behari styles of cooking cauliflower, and fish with radish, as well as a Marathi
sounding amti dhal (the most luxurious amti recipe I’ve
ever seen, replete with cashews, ghee and coconut!)
This cross-fusion extended abroad. All major palace
kitchens had foreign cooks for the ‘English’ meals they
had to be ready to serve, and Gayatri Devi’s grandmother
in Baroda was known for her keen interest in all kinds of
food. But her mother, once part of the famously cosmopolitan Cooch Behar family went further, and on their frequent trips abroad she took along their Indian cooks so
that instead of just making food, they
* THE ECONOMIC TIMES ON SATURDAY MUMBAI 1 AUGUST 2009
ET MULTIPLEX TRACKER
JULY 24 -29
2009
LUCK
NEW YORK
Net Collection: 293.25
Audience: 318849
Occupancy (%): 31.30
Week: 1
Net Collection: 34.66
Audience: 32510
Occupancy (%): 23.03
Week: 5
HARRY POTTER...
Net Collection: 121.09
Audience: 121939
Occupancy (%): 23.82
Week: 3
KAMBAKKHT ISHQ
Net Collection: 28.38
Audience: 31464
Occupancy (%): 19.89
Week: 4
NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM
ICE AGE 3-DAWN...
Net Collection: 74.07
Audience: 68430
Occupancy (%): 17.24
Week: 1
Net Collection: 26.45
Audience: 24944
Occupancy (%): 31.87
Week: 4
THE HANGOVER
Net Collection: 40.05
Audience: 33018
Occupancy (%): 43.14
Week: 5
Source : Inox, PVR, & Cinemax
TRANSFORMERS...
Net Collection: 21.10
Audience: 20386
Occupancy (%): 21.51
Week: 3
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