The cuisine of Rajputana

One cuisine that seems to have gone off the gastronomic radar is Rajput princely food. 

There used to be a restaurant in the Oberoi in the ’90s called Mewar, which specialised in this style, but it closed down; there is currently no restaurant in Mumbai serving Rajput food. One of the finest cookbooks from this tradition — and one that I particularly treasure — is Cooking

Delights of the Maharajas by Maharaja Digvijaya Singh of Saliana; it boasts of gems of both Rajput and Muslim royal cookery and one is grateful to the Maharaja, as many of the recipes are, in some respects, unique and would otherwise have been consigned to folk memory.

Unfortunately, Rajasthani food has become almost synonymous with Marwari vegetarian cuisine, so dishes like Gatta ki sabji and Ker sangri predominate.

So much so that in the recent cinematic epic Jodhaa Akbar, Princess Jodha was shown as taking charge of the imperial  kitchen to prepare a vegetarian meal for her otherwise carnivorous husband. 

Quite apart from the fact that most of the vegetables which the princess was using as her raw material — potatoes, tomatoes, cauliflower, even green chillies — were historically not available until the 19th century when the Europeans introduced these to India from the New World, the Rajputs were great meat-eaters and hunters.

If Mughal cuisine has an exotic delicacy influenced by its Central Asian provenance (such as the use of nuts like almonds, cream and rose water), Rajput cuisine is more rustic in character, homely and hearty. One iconic dish is the famous Junglee Maas, the creation of which has been attributed to the Maharaja of Sarwar.

Junglee Maas was made from meat brought in from the hunt and was cooked in pure ghee, with salt and red chillies. The simplicity of the dish owed itself to the paucity of fine cooking ingredients available in a hunting camp site.

Traditionally, it was the men who cooked the meat they hunted. Another feature of the Rajasthani cuisine is the high quality of the meat; some of the best goat meat you get in India is from the Jaipur area.

While meat is a traditional staple, Rajasthani cooking is predominantly vegetarian. In the desert areas, such as in and around the Golden City of Jaisalmer, the cooking medium is largely milk and ghee, with a minimum of water. 

Indigenously grown plants like sangria and ker are basics, as is gram flour used in the Gatta ki sabzi and powdered dal for mangodi. The most popular dish is the Dal baati, a combination of dal and baked wheat cakes.  Rice is scarce and traditionally served on festive occasions and decorated with sugar, saffron and dried fruits.

I am a fan of this cuisine. I had a recent taste of it at a Rajasthani food festival at the Kandahar in the Oberoi, where several innovative thalis were prepared, including a non-vegetarian one featuring, among other delights, the famous Lal maas and a delightful mangodi dumpling curry.

It could have been more comprehensive, of course — for dessert, in addition to the delicious Moong dal halwa, they could have served Ghevar (round cakes of white flour sweetened by syrup), particularly as we are now approaching Teej, when the dish is a traditional favourite.
Email: javed.gaya@gmail.com