a white mughal's kitchen: A Fabulous Falaknuma Feast

Hyderabad's Falaknuma Palace ... built in the 1890s

I haven’t posted for some months due to a hectic Christmas period ... holidays and lots of overseas visitors! But this first post for 2013 is to celebrate a fabulous dinner we had a few weekends ago at the Falaknuma Palace in Hyderabad.

The Oz Fest finale held in the Palace's Durbar Hall

The dinner was organised by the Australian Government to mark the end of the Oz Fest initiative ... a 4 month festival showcasing aspects of Australian culture held in a number of major cities across India. Juhee and I had met David Holly, the ebullient Consul-General for South India, the previous evening and he had very generously invited us to the dinner which was prepared by visiting Australian chef Christine Manfield.

Juhee & I at the reception

John Zubrzycki & his daughter Adele outside the Palace

The event was also an opportunity to celebrate the literary output of our friend – writer, journalist and Indophile John Zubrzycki, author of the best selling book “The Last Nizam” - which profiles the rule of the Nizams of Hyderabad and, in particular, the last Nizam Mukarram Jah's life in Australia , and his more recent work “The Mysterious Mr Jacob” - about a charismatic and mysterious diamond merchant who tried to sell the Sixth Nizam the famous Imperial Diamond in the 1890s. John was at the end of a book tour of India, accompanied by his daughter Adele. He read excerpts from both books during the dinner.

John reading from "The Last Nizam"

The Falaknuma Palace was the residence of the Sixth Nizam of Hyderabad Mahboob Ali Khan at the end of the 19th Century. Also known as the ‘Mirror of the Sky’, its an architectural menagerie of Tudor, Italian and French baroque styles and counts amongst its past guests King George the Fifth and the last Tsar of Russia, Nicholas the Second.

After falling on hard times in the 1950s and lying empty for decades, the palace was leased by the Taj Hotels group and opened as a '7 star' luxury hotel in 2010 following 10 years of extensive and meticulous restorations! It looked truly breathtaking in the evening light as we were ferried up the cobblestone drive in a golf buggy.

The dinner – a fusion of Indian and Australian ingredients - was described as a “Feast on Literature at the Durbar Hall” and featured several dishes including Masala spiced prawns and green mango salad, Yogurt baked snapper with walnut crumble, brown rice, fennel and pomegranante and Sichuan spiced chicken with chilli orange eggpplant.

Sichuan spiced chicken with chilli orange eggpplant

The food was indeed fabulous – and so were the wines – especially for us Aussies surviving in Hyderabad on beer, dark rum and the occasional bottle of locally made vino; mostly bottled in Maharashtra and still improving, so to speak! We tried the Leo Buring Riesling, Jim Barry Lodge Hill Shiraz, Penfolds Grenache Shiraz and a brilliant Brown Brothers Orange Muscat. (For a while I thought I was back in Dan Murphy’s wine shop in Melbourne!!)

Also present at the dinner was Dr Lachlan Strahan from the Australian High Commison in Delhi and the Victorian Governor Alex Chernov and his wife. We spent some time chatting with ex-The Australian newspaper photographer Graham Crouch, who is now based in Delhi working as a freelancer along with his partner who is the South Asia correspondent for the same publication. It was great to catch up on Australian media gossip and share a few laughs during the dinner! Graham very kindly allowed me to use some of his pictures in this post.

Christine Manfield ... from Sydney to the City of the Nizams!

I was impressed by the way Christine Manfield had managed to pull off such a superb dinner after having arrived in Hyderabad only a few days earlier with a very small retinue of staff from her restaurant in Sydney, the Universal and reportedly some 45 kilos of food. Christine herself is also a huge India buff and recently released a large coffee table- sized book on Indian food, “Tasting India”. Its part travelogue memoir, part cookbook with recipes collected from a number of chefs and home cooks across a large swathe of the subcontinent.

Our hosts very generously gave each guest a copy of her book along with John’s two publications and I couldn’t wait to try some of the recipes.

Here is dish that I cooked the next day “Spiced Prawn & Kokum Curry”, which was given to Christine by a chef at the Taj Malabar in Kochi, Kerala.

Spiced prawns simmering in a coconut- tomato broth
with kokum added as a souring agent

“Spiced Prawn & Kokum Curry”
from Christine Manfield’s “Tasting India”

Ingredients:

½ t turmeric, ¼ t salt, 2 t lime juice, 500gms green prawns, 2 T coconut oil (I used sunflower oil) , 1 t brown mustard seeds, 1 t fenugreek seeds, 4 T red onions – finely chopped, 1 T ginger-garlic paste, 2 T chilli paste, 200ml coconut milk, 12 curry leaves, 2 tomatoes pureed, and 2 T kokum water (soak a couple of pieces of kokum in hot water for 20 mins).

Method:

Combine turmeric, salt & lime juice and then rub into prawns and keep aside.

Heat coconut oil in pan & fry mustard and fenugreek seeds over medium heat until they splutter. (Careful they don’t burn!)   Add red onions & cook until it changes colour, then add ginger garlic paste and cook until brown.   Stir in chilli paste & coconut milk and simmer for 10 minutes’ stirring occasionally to avoid mixture catching on pan.

Add curry leaves & tomato puree and simmer for 2 mins.   Add prawns - toss through sauce – then add kokum water (I also added the whole kokum pieces).   Simmer for a further 5 mins and serve.