The Punjabi Pakwan

The people from Punjab are known for their big hearts and even greater hosts when serving the guests. Normally if you visit a Punjabi household, you will be fed so much that you nearly ask them to stop the servings!! Punjabis start their breakfast with Paranthas, a type of wheat made bread sauté in Ghee. At time the Paranthas are plain or at times they are stuffed with various vegetables or meat. A dollop of butter is added to that with plain yoghurt as a side dish and lassi, thick buttermilk to gulp it down… and now the Punjabi puttar is ready for the whole day’s hard work.

The Punjabis are hard workers and ardent fans of eating. The world famous tandoori Chicken comes out from the Punjabi kitchen with chicken baked in the clay oven. Earlier a clay oven was found almost in every household in Punjab as they prefer to marinate most of the vegetables, cottage cheese and meats and then bake it in the clay oven. One of the main features of Punjabi cuisine is its diverse range of dishes. Some of the famous dishes from the Punjabi cuisines are various types of wheat breads baked in the Tandoor, Mah ki Dal, Sarson ka saag, Chole Bhature and various tikkas (small chunks of marinated and baked meat). These dishes have become so popular that you can find it all around India now.

The lion herated Punjabi celebrates Baisakhi and gurupurabs with feeding one and all. With simple vegetarian meal like the roti, vegetables, Dal makhni and yoghurt is fed to all. It is topped with some kheer, a milk and rice prepartion or the kada prashad, a semolina sweet, prepared with ghee.

The food is tailor-made for the Punjabi lifestyle in which most of the rural folk burn up a lot of calories while working in the fields. Rice is cooked and eaten occasionally while wheat made dishes, are most popular. Punjabi food can be a complete vegetarian affair or a total non – vegetarian meal. But most of the dishes have onion, garlic, ginger and tomato paste to make the gravies thicker and giving it a tangy and spicy taste.

  The Awadhi cuisine

Awadh area is the area in the state of Uttarpradesh comprising the cities of Lucknow, Allahabad, Varanasi and Ayodhya. The name Awadh comes from the city of Ayodhya. The cuisine of this place is heavily influenced by the Mughal and Kashmir cuisines, but still the style of cooking of Awadh is totally different from the others.

Courtly manners, beautiful gardens, poetry, music, and fine cuisine patronized by the Persian-loving Nawabs of this area are well known. Cooking has always remained an art and the Awadhi cuisine is art with elegance. The graceful spread of the dastarkhwan, the soft texture of the dishes and the use of slight ittar (perfume) to give an exotic aroma to all dishes makes the Awadhi cuisine not only unique but much different than that of Mughalai cuisine.

The secret of the Awadhi cuisine is the technique of cooking in Dum style, which is cooking on slow fire or very less heat. Another special technique used is Zamin doz, where vegetables or meats are buried deep down in the ground wrapped in banana leaves and then some live coals kept above to cook it in slow fire. This gives the dish a totally different flavour.

Awadhi cuisine is famous for its various dishes like various types of Kebabs (pounded meat, mixed with herbs and spices, sprinkled with some ittar and then roasted or grilled on charcoal fire), Qorma (a thick gravy based vegetable or meat dish), Pulao (an aromatic rice preparation) and exotic deserts decorated with thin silver papers. The people of Awadh are equally fond of sweets, especially sweets made of condensed milk and sugar. The sewain (semolina preparation) is almost a must dessert to be eaten after meals.

The wheat breads (rotis) are another genre that the Awadhi cuisine has developed unlike the most of the Indian cuisines. Sheermaal, Baqarkhani and the Roomali roti have been the inventions of the Awadhi cuisine. The city of Lucknow and Varanasi are also famous for its tangy snacks like the kachoris and puris flavoured with spicy and tangy sauces. The Lavang latika, a specialty sweet has to have special mention.

The Awadhi cuisine belongs to the state of Uttar Pradesh. Some cities of Uttar Pradesh are famous for its delectable sweets. The most famous are the home made Ghujias, made during the festival of Holi,  the Kulfi (an indian form of ice cream with all natural flavours), the petha from Agra (a sweet made from white pumpkin), the pedha of Mathura and the Gulab Jamun and the imarti from Varanasi. All these delicacies have put the names of those cities in the food map of India.