From the homes of Punjab to the restaurant menu

It's sad but true that what passes for Punjabi cuisine in many of the restaurants in the National Capital Region (NCR) is a bit of a cliché.

- Avantika Bhuyan

It's sad but true that what passes for Punjabi cuisine in many of the restaurants in the National Capital Region (NCR) is a bit of a cliché. You know what to expect even before opening the menu card—some sort of tandoori kebab, dal makhani, garlic naan, a sweet shahi chicken gravy enriched with a paste of nuts. The list is somewhat incongruous with the image that the landscape of Punjab conjures up: lush fields, a wide variety of seasonal produce, community kitchens and slow-cooked meals. There is a disconnect between what is peddled under the monolith of "Punjabi food" and what is actually cooked in homes across the state.

One wonders what led to dishes such as dal makhani, tandoori chicken and butter chicken becoming synonymous with Punjabi cuisine in Delhi. Historian-academic Pushpesh Pant offers the sociological and psychological reasons behind this. "Partition impoverished people. It made them refugees who didn't have access to individual kitchens. Later, when they became a little more affluent and put roots down in Delhi, they started to enrich and embellish their food," he explains. Some became proprietors of dhabas and what they created was not a mirror image of the dishes from their hometowns but a repertoire to inform people that they were not always impoverished. And those dishes caught on. But neither were these homestyle recipes nor did they offer any nuance on the various regions of Punjab.