Jaipur's Vast Culinary Traditions

The original high-low cuisine

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Jaipur’s Royal Meals and Desert Delicacies

By Kavita Kanan Chandra

A whole chicken is rubbed with a marinade of locally sourced ingredients: red chilies, onions, garlic, ghee, and kaachri (wild muskmelon), a foraged desert vegetable. The chicken is then wrapped in roomali rotis and banana leaves and tied in a gunny sack. It is placed over hot coals in a pit dug in the ground, and then covered with mud. A few hours later the medieval dish of khad murg comes up delicious. An adaptation of khad khargosh (rabbit), this preparation is rooted in the hunting and warring history of Rajasthan: a clever way to avoid the eyes of the enemy, as no open fire or smoke is visible.  

This arid to semi-arid region of western India was often war-torn throughout the past, and the sparse vegetation and water scarcity limited food choices. This greatly influenced the cuisine of Rajasthan. The popular dishes dal (lentils), baati (unleavened bread), and churma (a sweet concoction of sugar and crumbly wheat flour) trace their origins to soldiers taking baati to battlefields. Baked on firewood, the round, hard wheat flour dough didn't spoil for days.

From the hunting escapades of the kings emerged the fiery laal maas (red mutton), jungli maas (forest mutton), and aromatic safed maas (white mutton with dried fruit), all of which can be found in elaborate thali served in upscale hotels. Copious chilies were used by cooks to mask the odor of wild boars and deer. A ban on hunting replaced game meat with mutton, but the spiciness remained. The kingdoms also had their own locally brewed spiced liqueur, now retailed under the label Royal Heritage.

The everyday meals, however, stemmed from the necessity of foraging berries and harvesting beans and seeds. One such Rajasthani dish is Ker-sangri subzi. It is prepared from dried berries (ker), and beans (sangri) from local khejri trees that bear bean pods.    

Jaipur’s meals are incomplete without sweets on any occasion. The local’s favorite is ghevar, a honeycomb disc-shaped confection drenched in ghee, sugar syrup and milk, sprinkled with dried fruits and saffron.

Jaispur is now an international city, where everything from Kenyan coffee to French-style macarons is easily available. The new additions are delicious, but Jaipur’s classics stand apart. 🇮🇳

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