Foodies relish feast of home staples from Awadh & Kolkata

Lucknow: Awadhi cuisine moved into shared public space at ‘The Home Cooked Food Festival', serving everyday food prepared in households across the city, highlighting recipes, techniques and flavours that continue to shape Lucknow's living culinary culture.The menu of home-style non-vegetarian dishes, included boti kabab, murgh kofta salan, murgh zafrani, murgh chatkhara, Kayasthana gosht, lal mirch ka qeema and Calcutta dish curry. Vegetarian guests were served lavish Awadhi, Lucknawi, Punjabi, Marwari and rural thalis, followed by traditional desserts.In keeping with this year's theme, ‘Raabta: Lucknow–Kolkata', Manzilat Fatima presented her mutton rezala at the event. "It is important to bring Lucknow–Kolkata connection to people through food," she said.At the festival, however, emphasis remained on food that is staple in homes and daily life rather than royal reinterpretations.Home chef Imrana Azmat, who presented chatkara chicken, said, "These are dishes I make at home and learnt from elders. The taste comes from practice, not measurements."Slow cooking, dum techniques and hand-ground spices were used in all dishes and visitors said difference was clear. Chef Sheeba Iqbal, said, "I served qeema biryani and mutton korma, authentic home-style dishes." Another home cook Farheen Iqbal said, "The dishes remind me of food we used to eat at home. You don't get this taste outside."College student Ananya Singh found the food familiar and balanced. An elderly person, Shekhar from Alambagh, said, "This is how Awadhi food is supposed to be."BOXShower of ‘sher' in fun contestLucknow: A ‘Baitbazi' competition of Urdu poetry in Antakshari format, drew attention to literary depth and cultural inclusiveness of the language. It requires contestants to recite sher (couplets), testing their command on vocabulary, memory and understanding of Urdu poetry. Contestants included Ayesha Siddiqui, Parveen Shuaib, Reshma Parveen, Najma Noorani, Qamar Rahman, Rahana Ali, Meena Irfan and Atiya B Dr Fatima Rizvi and Prof Qamar Jahan were the was judges.Jahan said, "Urdu is the language of masses. Unlike India, most Muslim countries don't use Urdu as their language, irrespective of religion," she said.