Abu Dhabi to get a taste of Dum Pukht cuisine from India

Abu Dhabi: Renowned Indian master chef Imtiaz Qureshi, whose family is credited for reviving the Awadhi cuisine, will serve up the distinctive ‘Dum Phukt’ at Abu Dhabi’s annual haute cuisine festival next month. Gourmet Abu Dhabi is scheduled for February 5-20 across UAE’s leading restaurants, and the Indian chef will treat food lovers to his culinary abilities during the time. Born into a family of legendary chefs to Mughul Emperors, going back to over 200 years, Chef Qureshi will be the guest chef at the five-star Beach Rotana Abu Dhabi’s Indigo restaurant from February 16-19. ‘Dum’, meaning to ‘breathe in’, and ‘Pukht’, meaning ‘to cook’, was adapted and perfected into a fine dining cuisine for the royal table by the Qureshi family of chefs. “Dum Phukt is classed as a ‘heritage cuisine’ of India, and its origins are steeped in history,” Qureshi said. “Many of the chefs and recipes of the Dum Pukht cuisine were forgotten or lost,” Qureshi who has made it a personal mission over his 60 year career to initiate the revival of this historic cuisine, said. Originally a rugged frontier cuisine of the nomadic tribes of the Great Himalayas, it was brought to the royal Mughal capital of Awadh in the 1800s in response to a famine that was ravaging the state. “With enormous containers of rice, meat, vegetables and spices slowly and continuously cooking over charcoal to be available day and night to feed the masses, a new cuisine was born with astonishing results and the splendid aromas attracted royal attention,” he said. The cuisine lived for many years as the most fashionable haute cuisine of the Indian aristocracy until falling into decline following India’s independence. Qureshi said many of the chefs and recipes of the Dum Pukht cuisine were forgotten or lost. “While I was working as executive chef of the five-star Sheraton Hotels in India, I was encouraged to research the Qureshi family annals to rediscover this forgotten cuisine of the Mughal’s,” he added. Refining and evolving the Dum Pukht tradition for modern centuries, Qureshi re-introduced the world to the incredible flavours and intensity of the slow cooking tandoor method with the opening of the Dum Pukht restaurant in New Delhi’s ITC Maurya Sheraton hotel in 1985. With his two sons following in his footsteps to become grand masters of Indian cuisine in their own rights, Dum Pukht cuisine has not only been revived but is now flourishing across the globe. ------PTI