Osama Jalali stirs food conversation from undivided India

For patrons of authentic Mughal cuisine, Osama Jalali’s food is the yardstick of taste and flavour. Chef Osama Jalali, best known for his work on reviving forgotten or lost Indian recipes, is also a historian-turned-culinary wizard who is on a mission to preserve the culinary heritage of undivided India. How? By travelling to Lahore, Peshwar and Punjab. He has relatives in these places, so he has access to the food and recipes from the period of undivided India.

The culinary expert, especially of North West Frontier cuisine, was in Hyderabad for a week-long food festival at Sheraton. While he was here to cook and treat gourmets to his specials, he also tried a few places in Hyderabad that is famous for Hyderabadi specialities. Osama visited Dakni Sweet Treats and enjoyed the badam ka jali and ashrafi, two signature desserts from Hyderabad.

Talking about his work with food and his latest project, Osama says he is working on documenting pre-Partition era food. Osama says, “In my quest, I got a chance to visit my aunts in Lahore and Peshawar and understand the cuisine in detail. First-hand information from traditional kitchens is always more informative than listening to someone talk about it. The heirloom recipes are so well kept and followed that it makes one proud of the food techniques and methods they adopted.”

Comparing the food of India and Pakistan, Osama says the food across the border is rustic. To a large extent, hand pounded spices are still used, there is no use of butter and cream. “One gets to taste the meat. It is not over powered with spices. Curd is a dominant ingredient, a lot of onion and tomato paste is also used.”

Osama says that for the festival, he is making sure there are equal number of vegetarian and non-vegetarian dishes. Some of the dishes Osama includes for his food fetes are chana dal bharta, dal gosht and saag. Is the dal gosht like the Hyderabadi dalcha? Osama says, “No, it is different. It is mostly prepared with chana dal and is tempered mildly with spices.”

Food fetes apart what is Osama busy with? “I am currently working on my recipe book. I am also documenting different kinds of biryanis. I have documented close to 100 types of biryani. And my work on forgotten and heirloom recipes continue on my YouTube channel.”