Wajid Ali Shah & the Birth of Awadhi Cuisine in Bengal

Wajid Ali Shah brought the food and traditions of his Awadhi ancestors to erstwhile Calcutta, and the resulting cuisine is a complex and rich amalgamation of both Lucknawi and Bengali traditions.

allāh ai buto hameñ dikhlā.e lucknow
sote meñ bhī ye kahte haiñ ham haa.e lucknow

Wajid Ali Shah wrote these lines in Matia Burj in Kolkata (then Calcutta). He never forgot his beloved Lucknow and this, in all possibility, is what spurred him on to create a mini-Lucknow in Matia Burj, complete with palaces, kite-flying, chikankari, a zoo, and of course, a kitchen.

Modern Bengali cuisine owes a lot to the him and his kitchen. A gourmet, but a light eater, Wajid Ali Shah followed the tradition of his Awadhi ancestors and encouraged experiments in the kitchen. I found myself fascinated with him, because of his contribution to the arts, and because, like my grandfather, a refugee from Chittagong, Bangladesh, he too could never return to his beloved homeland.

And that marked the beginning of my search. The unrest in East Bengal (now Bangladesh) brought my grandfather to Calcutta. What brought Wajid Ali Shah to this foreign land where he stayed for the last 31 years of his life?

The British Raj was not very kind to rulers and landowners. Their treatment of Wajid Ali Shah was no different. History books tell us that he was exiled to Calcutta; but his descendants tell a different story. According to Shahanshah Mirza, a direct descendant of Wajid Ali Shah from the line of his son, Babur Mirza, Awadh was annexed on false charges of maladministration. “Wajid Ali Shah came to Calcutta to meet the Governor-General on May 13, 1856. But the Governor-General was looking after the interests of the British. So, he decided to go to England to meet the Queen. However, the long journey from Lucknow to Calcutta made him unfit for further travel. His mother, Janab-i-Aliyyah Malika Kishwar, made the journey on his behalf along with his son and brother,” Mirza explains.

The uprising of 1857 squashed any hopes of a return to Awadh. Wajid Ali Shah remained imprisoned in Fort William for 26 months. On release, he was asked to choose any place other than Lucknow to live out the rest of his days, and he chose Calcutta. “Wajid Ali Shah possibly chose Matia Burj because it stands on the banks of river Hooghly, and it reminded him of River Gomti in Lucknow,” Mirza points out.

Determined to lead the best life possible, rather than giving in to melancholy, Wajid Ali Shah recreated his Awadhi lifestyle. “After 1856 he had no kingdom to concern himself with, no administration, no army, no judiciary, so he concentrated on his interests and pleasures — architecture, poetry, drama, music, and food. He had expensive tastes and, although the British gave him a very large pension, he was always in debt. In Calcutta he enjoyed many of the same things he had in Lucknow — a large menagerie, many mut’ah marriages, musicians, dancers, theatrical performances, and a large kitchen,” says historian Rosie Llewellyn-Jones who documented the last years of Wajid Ali Shah in Calcutta, in her book, The Last King in India: Wajid Ali Shah.

Following the footsteps of their beloved ruler, nearly 500 families moved to Calcutta from Lucknow. With them came the sports of kite-flying and cock-fighting, the delicate embroidery work of chikan, and the delicious kormas and kalias of the Awadhi kitchen. And the last, left its mark on this land filled with food connoisseurs.

A celebration in a Bengali household is incomplete without the many varieties of pulao, korma, and kalia. The rohu kalia or the mutton korma that we have come to identify and love as quintessential Bengali, has its roots in Awadh.

Wajid Ali Shah continued to live a lavish life in Calcutta, entertaining nobility and zamindars. His bawarchis and khansamas had complete freedom to experiment. Prominent food historian, Pritha Sen points out, “One bawarchi did not cook everything. Instead there were specialists — the biryanchi cooked only biryani, a dessert chef made only desserts, often times making one particular kind of dessert alone, and then a different chef cooked only dals. He carried the Awadh kitchen set-up to Calcutta. It was lavish in a manner that Calcutta had never seen before.”

These influences slowly, but gradually, percolated into the kitchens of Calcutta’s nobility. The dishes themselves were not completely new, as Mughlai cuisine was already present in the city. However, the delicate nature of Awadhi cuisine was new to Calcutta. The rich use of Mughal spices was replaced with subtle, fragrant spices. “Awadhi cuisine focussed on marination and the dum-pukht style of cooking,” explains Mirza. “Meat, fish, and vegetables were marinated in curd and spices, that lent both flavour and texture. The philosophy of Awadhi cuisine is that it should not attack your senses.” A sentiment echoed by Sen, when she laments that real Awadhi cuisine has been destroyed because people adopted food habits without really understanding the essence of it. “Awadhi pulao or Awadhi biryani was extremely light and extremely fragrant, with very subtle aromas. But we have killed it with the overuse of kewra, rose water, and meetha attr.” Saffron was another important ingredient that entered the kitchen at this time.

But nothing left a mark like the biryani!

Calcutta biryani is the only biryani that makes an appearance with potato and egg. There are several stories about how the potato came to be in the biryani. The most popular of these remains the one where it was included in biryani to add bulk, since Wajid Ali Shah could not afford to purchase enough meat to feed everyone.

It is likely this story holds truth. Sen mentions, “The British gave Wajid Ali Shah an allowance of one lakh rupees. He was still playing the role of the ruler, and there was a huge population that followed him to Matia Burj. So, in my mind, that is when the biryani slowly started gaining importance, because he had to feed so many people. Since biryani was the common man’s food, the potato was introduced to add to bulk by some bawarchi in his kitchen. Wajid Ali Shah himself was possibly unaware that the potato had been introduced.” But the potato was chosen for a very specific reason. Sen explains, “Potato, back then, was a rather unknown vegetable that had yet not entered Calcutta kitchens. It came to the Calcutta market because of the British. And it allowed Wajid Ali Shah and his nobility to maintain a sense of superiority despite reduced circumstances. The potato was exotic, it absorbed all the flavours, and added bulk without hampering the taste of the biryani.”

Mirza supports the theory of the potato being an exotic vegetable that only nobility could afford. But he believes that its addition to biryani was the result of one of many experiments that took place in Wajid Ali Shah’s kitchen, rather than an attempt to add bulk. “Wajid Ali Shah, like the other rulers of Awadh, had given a free hand to the chef to experiment with new dishes. In one such experiment, the chef added potato. Because of the dum-pukht style of cooking, where the steam does not escape the vessel, the potato absorbed the flavour of the spices, meat, and saffron. When it was served to Wajid Ali Shah, he liked the taste so much that he instructed his biryanchi to henceforth, add potato to his biryani.”

And the egg?

While Mirza vehemently argues that a biryani with egg is not an Awadhi biryani at all, and does not deserve a place at the table, Sen clears the air — the egg was added as a result of market competition. “The egg came in the early-to-mid-80s when commercial biryani places were competing. There was a mutton biryani and a chicken biryani, and then there was a mutton biryani special and a chicken biryani special. But how to make it special? They added an egg.”

Whichever version is true, Calcutta biryani will never be served without potato (or egg, for that matter).

Like all immigrants, Wajid Ali Shah shared his food with the people of his new home. And conversely, there were changes made to his kitchen by this new homeland.

Fatima Mirza, wife of Shahanshah Mirza, and a direct descendant of Wajid Ali Shah from the lineage of his first wife, Khas Mahal, points out, “A lot of masalas were used in his Lucknow kitchen, and a lot of fat. His khansamas brought a lot of spices with them to Calcutta. But because of the temperature difference in both the cities, they had to rethink the spices and their volumes. They wanted food to be tasty, but also easily digestible. Keeping this in mind, the use of saffron, ghee, nutmeg, and mace was reduced.”

Changes were not limited to spices. New dishes were also added to the menu. Sen mentions, “Items like Hilsa kebab and Rohu dum, became part of their dining table.” The most notable addition was the use of Bandel cheese, a cheese indigenous to the erstwhile Portuguese colony of Bandel, West Bengal. “You will not find the use of Bandel cheese in Bengali cooking. But the Awadhi population of Calcutta adopted this cheese in their cuisine,” Sen points out. Bandel cheese helped them maintain a reputation as food connoisseurs, and distinguish their cuisine from that of the already-present Muslim population of Bengal.

Simultaneously, evolution of chicken and mutton biryani took place at this time. Since the original biryani was cooked with beef, it was not consumed by the Hindu population. However, the popularity of the dish was fast catching on. Keeping in line with the Ganga-Jamni tradition of Awadh, biryanichis were encouraged to substitute beef with mutton and chicken to suit the taste of the Hindu population of Calcutta.

Certain changes also came about due to growing debts, and the downfall of the subsequent generations. As per Sen, “as the later generations grew more and more impoverished, ghee began to be substituted with mustard oil and dalda. I have had the opportunity of witnessing some recipes of Wajid Ali Shah’s descendants, and they are mainly cooked in dalda and mustard oil, with a few spoons of ghee added at the end.”

Today, to find authentic Awadhi cuisine in Calcutta, you’d have to wrangle an invitation to lunch or dinner at the Mirza’s, or to one of the families living in Matia Burj who still maintain the old ways. The so-called Awadhi restaurants in the city are popular, but are certainly not cooking what was once served at the table of Wajid Ali Shah.

Thankfully, Manzilat Fatima, a direct descendant of Wajid Ali Shah from the lineage of his second wife, Begum Hazrat Mahal, has launched Manzilat’s, where you can sample the cuisine that evolved around Wajid Ali Shah in Kolkata. What started as a pop-up is today a roof-top restaurant that serves Awadhi cuisine as it should be. The biryani is light and flavourful, the kebabs melt in your mouth, and the wise would save some space for phirni.

Fatima is insistent that her food is Awadhi, not Mughlai. “During the early years, it was a constant struggle. People always called it Manzilat’s Mughlai food. But it is not Mughlai! Mughlai food is heavy with spices. But Awadhi food is always light on the stomach; mild, aromatic, and flavourful,” explains Fatima.

Nevertheless, she is also quick to recognise that over the years there has been an intermingling of cultures and traditions. “My grandfather, Mahar Qadr was raised and married in Matia Burj. My grandmother also belonged to Wajid Ali Shah’s lineage, but she too was born and raised in Calcutta. But my mother was from Lucknow. The real essence of Lucknawi culture came back to our family through my mother. The exchange between my grandmother and my mother gave rise to the food in my family, and what evolved was my Kolkata Awadhi.”

Since recipes were passed down orally, no cookbooks or recipe books exist. However, the descendants are aiming to break tradition; both Fatima Mirza and Mazilat Fatima are working on cookbooks to document family recipes.

Wajid Ali Shah made Calcutta his home. He recreated his beloved Lucknow. We will never know if he made peace with this change. But Calcutta food connoisseurs will forever remain indebted to the man and his kitchen.

Images by Manzilat Fatima

Originally published at https://www.goya.in on October 7, 2021.