Gujral - Moti Mahals Tandoori Trail

MOTI MAHALS Tandoori Trail OTHER TITLES Continental Cuisine for the Indian Palate Street Foods of India The Indian Vegetarian Cookbook The Landour Cookbook Art of Indian Cuisine Traditional Kashmiri Cuisine: Wazwaan CHEFS SPECIAL SERIES Bengali Kitchen Chinese Kitchen Kashmiri Kitchen Favourite Indian Desserts Low Calorie Desserts Nepalese Kitchen Punjabi Kitchen Rajasthani Kitchen South Indian Kitchen Goan Kitchen Parsi Kitchen Kerala Kitchen Marwari Kitchen Gujarati Kitchen Delhi Kitchen Vegetarian Fiesta All rights reserved. No part of this publication
may be transmitted or reproduced in any form or
by any means without prior permission from the
publisher. ISBN: 81-7436-316-5 Roli & Janssen BV 2004
Published in India by Roli Books
in arrangement with Roli & Janssen BV
M-75 Greater Kailash II (Market)
New Delhi 110 048, India
Ph: ++91 (11) 2921 2271, 2921 2782, 2921 0886
Fax: ++91 (11) 2921 7185, E-mail: roli@vsnl.com
Website: rolibooks.com To my father, Nand Lal Gujral Acknowledgements How does one begin when there are so many people to thank? Yet, the people most directly responsible for this book include my wife, Sonal, without whom I would be lost. To my mother, Rupa, who has been the backbone of my life; My children, Tanisha and Gunav for being such perfect and patient kids; Ritu Dhawan for lending a sisterly hand whenever in need and introducing me to the writing world; My publisher, Pramod Kapoor, for believing in my work and giving it life; Sourish Bhattacharya, of HT City, for providing me with an opportunity to write my recipe column in the HT City, which became the basis to write this cookbook; And Uma Vasudev for writing the introduction of this book. Last but not least, to all Moti Mahal fans who swear by our butter chicken and who have made Moti Mahal a household name. Contents A Legend and the Man T his is the story of a man who set out on a culinary adventure and changed the face of Indian cooking. This is the story of a man and a recipe which internationalized the Indian taste for succulence and spice in its food. This is also the story of a man who made the curry a butter-filled delight, bringing to the ordinary chicken a special flavour. A man who turned the plebian village tandoor for baking into a royal mode for his innovation: The tandoori chicken. Then came the butter chicken.

The result: a revolution in taste, a change in Indian eating habits, and a place on the international gourmet map. The man was Kundan Lal Gujral. The restaurant where he housed his innovations was Moti Mahal. The two became a legendary mix. The Partition of India in 1947 was followed by the Punjabi invasion of Delhi. The laid-back Dilliwallas, as the inhabitants of Indias capital are called, were themselves a victim of the traumatizing effect of the changing post-Partition social equations.

They did not have time to re-learn their priorities. If the Dilliwala felt paralyzed by the tragedy, the refugee-Punjabi was galvanized into fighting for a new avatar or rebirth. Lahore, the then capital of the united Punjab, was known as the Paris of the East for its music, art, theatre, and literary initiatives, even as the forerunner of Bollywoods later happening era. Those who fled from there, came to Delhi, rolled up their sleeves and putting cultural concerns onto the back burner, decided to first regain their economic dignity. Businessmen of standing, lawyers of repute, women reared in opulent luxury having lost all, decided to make their economic renewal a challenging venture. The Dilliwala was swamped by this aggressive desire of the Punjabi to rebuild.

Millionaires, having lost everything, even took to selling wares on wayside trollies, women who had lifted a finger only to summon their maids took up jobs, creating the first post-Independence wave of the feminist assertion. All the horrific happenings of the Partition, rape, murder, loot, the reversal of fortunes, did not yet throw up a post-Partition Punjabi beggar on the street. One of this intrepid breed to whom defeat was a dirty word was Kundan Lal Gujral. He was a Punjabi-Pathan from the North-West Frontier Province. This area, in what later became part of West Pakistan, comprised a unique blend of not only Hindu-Muslim culture but also a Punjabi-Pathan mix. The area was uniquely free of communal tension till the politics of Partition began to orchestrate the raucous theme of mutual hatred and the Hindu minority was constrained to flee across the newly created borders and vice-versa.

Though his father, Dewan Chand, owned a cloth shop in Chakwal, a small town in district Jhelum, the young Kundan became a professional product of the capital city, Peshawar, where he got his first job. He was not even in his teens when he found himself in a position where he could exploit his own resources. He began to work as an assistant in an eatery and catering joint in 1920 owned by a sardar named Mukha Singh who took the youngster under his wing. In 1927, the eatery graduated into a restaurant and Peshawar became culinary home to the first Moti Mahal. Rabindra Seth, well known columnist on tourism who himself hails from Peshawar and is one of the few who can regale history-hungry writers for memories of that era, recalls, The Moti Mahal of that period in Peshawar was more a takeaway joint. The tandoori rotis and kebabs were strung on skewers and cooked in the tandoor and constituted popular fare.

Within three months, Kundan Lals energetic salesmanship helped the eatery break even. He carved out such a personal niche for himself amongst the customers that he would serve that he soon established a warm rapport with the local gentry during eight years of his diligent apprenticeship. Sardar Trilochan Singh, a Sikh Pathan also from Peshawar and now settled in Delhi, remembers Kundan Lals early foray into the culinary world from his Peshawar days. He was a sturdy worker. He exuded this tremendous energy and enthusiasm in carrying out orders and reaching out to people. He was always on the move, establishing a clientele with an eager response to home deliveries.

This honed Kundan Lals skills in what he later described as the six Ps for successthe quality of the Product, its Price, its Promotion, the Place, of course, and finally, the People, and Personalized service. Except for the Place which was lost to Partition, he came to Delhi armed with the other five guidelines and twelve thousand rupees which was all he could salvage from a tragedy that had robbed people not only of their possessions but also for many cases their entire families. In 1947, both Mukha Singh and the thirty-seven-year-old Kundan Lal, with his wife Prakash Devi, son Nand, and widowed mother Maya Devi came to Delhi together as refugees. Mukha Singh went off to Dehradun and was never heard of again, recalls Seth, while Kundan Lal stayed on in Delhi. He changed the face of Indian cookery. Catering was his first love.