Food from a royal Hyderabadi table now available in Dubai

Chef Naved Nasir, of Dubai-based restaurant Khadak, and Rani Kulsum Begum collaborate to create a seven-course meal fit for even the fussiest gourmand

- Karishma Nandkeolyar

"In many royal Indian homes," says chef Naved Nasir, of Dubai-based restaurant Khadak, “the daughters weren't allowed into the kitchens. Only daughters-in-law were handed down precious recipes generation after generation.”

This was so the women could not divulge the secrets of their maternal home in their married one.

Rani Kulsum Begum, the niece of Salar Jung III of Hyderabad, changed that tradition. While she did not learn the alchemical secrets of spice mixtures that wafted in her mum's kitchens, when she married Kunwar Raja of Mehmoodabad, in Uttar Pradesh, and began to learn how to cook, she found it difficult to digest that the flavours of well-loved dishes were so different from the ones she had tasted back home. Distressed, she wrote to her grandmother, telling her of her homesickness for the food she had grown up with. And like most doting grandmothers, hers sent back letters with basic recipes. Media reports say it took her about six months to master the staples, but once she did, she found her purpose - to be the repository of decades-old formulas and to share the outcome of her cooking experiments.