Hyderabadi Dastarkhwan

Hyderabadi cuisine grew out of one of the most direct fusions in Indian food history: Mughlai cooking brought south by the Qutb Shahi and Bahmani courts met Telugu and Marathi cooking traditions already established on the Deccan plateau, refined further under the Nizams of Hyderabad from the 17th century onward into something distinct from either parent tradition. A formal Hyderabadi meal, the dastarkhwan, traditionally runs through five stages: aghaz, a soup to open; mezban, appetisers; waqfa, a palate-cleansing sorbet between courses; mashgool dastarkhwan, the main course itself; and zauq-e-shahi, dessert, a structure that borrows the idea of a paced, multi-stage banquet from Persian and Mughal court dining. Biryani is the dish that carries the cuisine's reputation furthest beyond Hyderabad, and the Nizami version, built on basmati rice, mutton, yogurt and a specific layering-and-sealing cooking method called dum, is treated as the standard against which other regional biryanis are measured; regional variants such as Kalyani biryani, made with beef, and tahari, a simpler rice-and-meat dish, sit alongside it. Haleem, a dense, slow-cooked stew of pounded wheat, lentils and mutton, is above all a Ramadan dish, traditionally prepared and sold in huge quantities for the evening iftar meal that breaks the day's fast. Mirchi ka salan, a curry built on long green chillies, and baghara baingan, whole baby eggplants in a peanut-and-sesame gravy, represent the cuisine's vegetable side, both markedly spicier and more herb-heavy than their equivalents further north. Dessert closes on khubani ka meetha, a stewed apricot pudding topped with cream or ice cream, a dish that leans on dried fruit rather than the milk-based sweets common elsewhere in India, another quiet marker of the cuisine's distinct blend of influences. Hyderabadi haleem, a slow-cooked meat and wheat stew, was awarded Geographical Indication status by India's GI registry in 2010.