Food: How an HT Brunch cover star’s signature dish went viral

Raj Kapoor’s grandson, Armaan’s Truffle Dal Bukhara is loved by all, but the young food entrepreneur was apprehensive of how his family would like it

As beloved as kaali dal or dal makhani is to most Indians, weirdly, most of us don’t talk it up much. It barely features on social media, for example. It’s rarely the subject of deep dives in culinary journalism.

In the last few months however, that seems to have changed. That’s because of a new take on the dish invented by Armaan Jain—Truffle Dal Bukhara. When Armaan, the proprietor of the cloud kitchen Junglee Kitchen, placed this dish on the menu of his earlier cloud kitchen, Kitchen Tales (which has since closed), Truffle Dal Bukhara went viral, so to speak, finding itself on the menus of many restaurants around India, and making its way onto social media.

The root of it all

“It makes me very, very happy that so many restaurants are following in our footsteps. I take it as a compliment,” says Armaan.

He doesn’t have much choice really, because dishes don’t have copyrights. Even if they do, it’s easy for other people to change just a single ingredient and get away with it.

Armaan’s Truffle Dal Bukhara is, in fact, a take on a family recipe that he was very nervous to introduce to his clan. Not just because all creators get butterflies in their tummies when they first introduce their creation to the world at large, but because Armaan’s family is the Kapoor khandaan—the first family of films and food. He is the son of Rima, Raj Kapoor’s daughter, and like most of his family, took a shot at films, only to realise that his passion for food is stronger. Unlike many of the Kapoor clan however, this passion goes beyond simply eating. Armaan was always happiest when he was pottering around the kitchen.

“The food we make at home is very clean and traditional, so I was very nervous to ask the family to try my version of the kaali dal when I was finally ready with it,” says Armaan.

The Kapoors smoke their dal makhani, and Armaan wasn’t certain if the recipe could be innovated upon, but he wanted to add his own twist to it. So he worked on his recipe for over a year before presenting it to the clan.

“They gave it a thumbs up, and that boosted my confidence, so I put it on the menu of Kitchen Tales, and even now when my focus is on Junglee Kitchen, it’s the highest selling dish on my menu,” says Armaan.

Armaan Jain on the cover of HT Brunch in January 2021

Home and heart(h)

Junglee Kitchen is a cloud kitchen run by Armaan and Anissa, his wife. Its menu focusses on Kapoor clan favourites, including Junglee mutton, paya, mutton galouti and butter chicken, all based on recipes put together over the last five generations, which Armaan thanks his generations of grandmothers for, and refers to as his heritage. “I am happy that I have managed to merge my heritage food with a touch of my improvisation, and bring it to hundreds of other people,” he says.

Right now, Junglee Kitchen works from home, with everyone involved, even to the extent of sticking labels on containers. They began with deliveries and pick-ups only on weekends, then slowly spread to weekdays, occasionally holding pop-ups, and catering for weddings and events as well.

“We shuffle between 12 to 15 of our best dishes at our pop-ups and now 80 per cent of our customers are repeats,” Armaan says happily. “We want to scale it up at some point in the future, taking Junglee Kitchen pan-India, and selling packaged food. But this is our first growth period and for now we are just sticking to strategic partnerships and a cloud kitchen.”

From HT Brunch, December 5, 2021

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