Food is in our genes. The smell of it cooking low and slow in earthen pots on a wooden fire calls out to centuries-old memories of wood stoves and open-air charcoal grills. In the course of a culinary search, chef, food historian and food writer Osama Jalali realised that countless recipes and techniques are being subsumed by modern cooking styles.
He is one of the handful of traditionalists reviving the original Indian method of cooking over a chulha, now being rendered obsolete by gas cylinders and electric stoves even in rural areas. Jalali can thank Netflix for it. He and Sameer Dhar are the founders of the Village Degh kitchen in Gurgaon, where like in the Netflix’s show ‘Chef’s Table: BBQ’, the open fire is hot stuff. In Jalali’s kitchen, the spices are hand-ground in a mortar with the ingredients sourced locally from farmers and stored in pits in the ground instead of in refrigerators.
The recipes vary in pedigree—heirloom dishes from his childhood in Old Delhi, dishes sourced from relatives in Rampur and menus picked up during his gastronomic searches all over North India. The common spice in them is Indian rustic quintessential. Just like Lennox Hastie’s kitchen in Australia, neither gas nor electricity is used in the process. The spices are ground on an old-fashioned okhli (mortar and pestle) and the condiments crushed on the sil-batta (grinding stone), after which the food is cooked in large copper-bottomed deghs. “Since the copper in the degh is a good conductor of heat, it ensures equal distribution of heat which it keeps trapped.
The wooden fire generates much less heat than a gas fire, and retains the essential oils of the spices and condiments in the dish. Even the carbon particles that collect at the bottom of a degh after repeated use aren’t removed to ensure slow and even distribution of the heat,” says Jalali.True to authenticity, many of the ingredients are sourced locally. The kathal used in the making of Mirzapur Kebabs is marinated in spices from Khatri Baoli. The meat comes straight from the slaughterhouse. The milk for the Kadhao Kheer is sourced from Mewat. With almost 50 litres of premium milk being reduced down to 10, it creates a thick, rich, creamy and sweet piece of heaven.
Traditional dishes of Old Delhi and Rampur are staples on the Village Degh menu. The Beram Khan ki Daal Gosht, for example, is a dish Jalali remembers from Delhi 6. The meat in Shahjananbadi Nalli Niharihas the characteristic softness that comes from overnight cooking. A few rare recipes from the princely state of Rampur are constants in Jalali’s cooking, drawn from the family’s feudal legacy of bawarchis and khansaamas.
The Rampuri Chicken Kofte is one such offering. Kebabs from Mirzapur (not to be confused with the butchery in the Amazon serial) are characterised by the stringy texture of pounded meat, unlike the Awadh style kebabs that melt in the mouth. A recent trip to Punjab gave up the secrets of Faridkot Meat Curry, a Chicken curry from Atari and the langar dal from gurdwaras, which Jalali has added to the Village Degh menu. Thanks to gourmet explorers like him, the lost treasures of native Indian kitchens are finding their place on modern tables after decades of desi junk food.