Indian restaurants are reviving the culinary legacy lost during Partition with Pakistani dishes on their menus

The Hindu

2 days ago

In her book, Remnants of a Separation: A History of the Partition through Material Memory, author Aanchal Malhotra writes about the material memory that refugees from Pakistan carried with them during the Partition 1947— utensils, jewellery, soap boxes or combs. Along with these, they also carried intangible memories — the taste of creamy, delicious Lalla Musa dal from Pakistan's city Lala Musa, Lahore's famous street food katlama, chapli kebabs from Peshawar, and sajji from Balochistan.
These dishes are now finding their way once again into our culinary landscape. At Ikk Panjab's outlets in Delhi and Chandigarh, one comes across kunna gosht from Chiniot and roasted Lahori chicken chargha. Chef Amninder Sandhu serves katlama at her newly opened restaurant Kikli in Delhi.
At a pop-up he hosted last year, Delhi-based Chef Sadaf Hussain too served the Lalla Musa Dal; and Chef Vanshika Bhatia, whose ancestors belong to the Bannu community of now Pakistan, is researching and documenting dishes such as painda chicken and burke wale chole. Take a look at the recipe books aisle at any popular book store, chances are that you will spot ones on the foods of undivided India, with recipes from Sindh, Multan, Lahore and Peshawar — Sumayya Usmani's Summers Under the Tamarind Tree: Recipes & Memories from Pakistan; Maryam Jillani's Pakistan: Recipes and Stories from Home Kitchens, Restaurants, and Roadside Stands; and Shehar Bano Rizvi's Virsa: A Culinary Journey from Agra to Karachi, to name a few.
The renewed interest in showcasing and documenting the foods of our ancestors, particularly by those whose parents or grandparents migrated to India during the world's largest forced migration, points at the revival of a lost culinary heritage.
Deepika and Rajan Sethi, founders of Ikk Panjab, realised that there was a story about their own home that was waiting to be told. 'Our ancestors were born in pre-Partition Punjab and that is our story, as it is the story of millions of Punjabis who live on the either side of Punjab, as well as across the world,' says Rajan. The food at their outlets in Delhi and Chandigarh is an attempt to carry forward the conversation about the roots of their food and cooking techniques to future generations, because, as Rajan simply puts it, 'If they don't do it now, who will?'
Some of the dishes at the restaurant include matthi chole, which the Sethis have grown up eating at home. A delicious evening snack, it is made of flaky matthis topped with spicy chole, kachumbar and chutney. Its menu also features Balochochistan's famous sajji — made with whole chicken coated with a spicy marinade — and chapli kebabs from Peshawar, where mince is pressed between the palms of one's hands before it is fried.
Ikk Panjab ditches dal makhni; Rajan shares, 'it is not a traditional Punjabi dish'. His grandmother Harnam Kaur, who came to India from Rawalpindi, pointed it out, prompting them to replace dal makhni with the traditional maah ki daal. Most of the dishes on the restaurant's menu are an amalgamation of their extensive travels in Punjab, and recipes from their family and friends whose ancestors too hailed from different parts of Pakistan.
Writer and brand lead Vernika Awal, who came onboard Ikk Panjab, has been documenting foods of undivided Punjab with her project Delectable Punjab, since 2016. Vernika, whose grandparents migrated from Rawalpindi to Jalandhar, was curious about the different food traditions in her family. She realised that some of her ancestors hailed from different parts of Pakistan, including Peshawar and Multan. 'It got me thinking not just about the food, but also about the intersection of culture and food and how that moves forward,' she says. Her archival project now presents itself as a curated Instagram page, where she documents her family's culinary heritage.
While doing the research for the menu of Kikli, during her travels in Punjab, Amninder came across dishes and techniques that hark back to undivided Punjab.
Take katlama, for instance. The shallow-friend bread from Lahore is smeared with chickpea, crushed coriander, anardana, red chillies, and black dal. Another dish she serves at the restaurant is a tribute to keema karela. 'I met a lady in Punjab who told me that she learnt this recipe from her grandfather who came to India from the other side of the border,' she recalls. At Kikli, she uses the traditional danda-kunda (mortar and pestle) to pound chutneys and slow-cooks dals and saag overnight in iron deghs on a hara.
While Ikk Panjab and Kikli find their inspiration in the cuisine of undivided Punjab, there are many other parts of present-day Pakistan that appeal to chefs and culinary experts. At Falak, The Leela Bhartiya City, Bengaluru, MasterChef Farman Ali uses techniques from pre-Partition India to prepare Mughlai food — from using desi ghee and mustard oil for cooking to grinding masalas in sil battas.
In her recently published book Sindhi Recipes and Stories from a Forgotten Homeland, author Sapna Ajwani takes the reader on a culinary journey through the kitchens of Sindh. 'Everyone who survived Partition is now in their 80s and 90s. Their memories are fading with time, and the current generation may not speak the language (Sindhi). But, hopefully, they will cook the food and pass it down through generations,' she told The Hindu in an interview published in February this year. In her book, she lists Sindhi dishes too — seyal teevan, kheema ja kofta and Karachi bun kebab, among others.
Vanshika's grandparents migrated to Kanpur, Faridabad and Dehradun from Bannu in north-western Pakistan. While looking for the recipe of a dish called peeli dahi online, she realised how little has been documented about the Bannuwali cuisine.
The curiosity pushed her to find out more Bannuwali dishes, such as burke wale chole (boiled chole mixed with mango pickle and a layer of moong dal on top, best enjoyed with parathas), or andhi kukdi (leftover roti boiled with black pepper, ghee and onions — it is believed that in the absence of chicken at home, children were told to shut their eyes, eat this dish, and imagine they were eating chicken curry).
As culinary anthropologist and historian, Mumbai-based Kurush Dalal, while talking about how Partition impacted the country's culinary heritage, says that one of the first things it did was to cut off the people on both sides from their traditional foods. 'The bread halwa made by Punjabis or the potato macaroni made by Sindhis, even today, are examples of how the refugees modified their food parcels to meet their requirements,' he explains.
As food historian and storyteller Sadaf puts it — the revival of interest in the culinary traditions predating Partition is due to the existence of people who want to celebrate their shared past, unlike those who believe in dividing the two countries further. The flavourful legacy forms a powerful bridge, and this showcase of our shared past is proof that some bonds transcend political boundaries.