Biryani, kebabs & Ranveer!

You cannot take Lucknow out of celebrity chef Ranveer Brar. In the third season of show Raja Rasoi, the chef dished out variety of cuisines from his hometown. “This season comes with a tagline Andaaz Anokha and there can’t be a show without nawabi cuisine featuring in it. We have five episodes on Awadhi food,” Ranveer tells HT City on phone from Copenhagen.

He is in Denmark for a Forbes Top 50 event. “There is so much Lucknow in my forthcoming show that my team sometimes says that we could rechristen the show as Raja Rasoi aur Lucknow. Lucknow comes naturally to me. This time we have two episodes on biryani and kebabs,” he says.

In the biryani episode he has drawn a parallel between Lucknow and Hyderabadi biryani. For kebab show they prepared galavati kebabs and sold them in the market. There is an episode on breakfast which will feature the famous kulcha-nihari. The entire 26-episode show has been shot at a house at Moira, Goa in 26 days.

Unlike the previous two seasons, in which he gave an insight into the royal kitchens, this time Ranveer is going to look at Indian food with a different angle.

“It will be ‘Hindustani khane ke baat’ this season. We have divided food in sections. For example Safar food in which we talk about litti-choka and sattu dishes. During the long sail for Haj a dish called Jahaji Korma used to be prepared which had shelf life of 40-50 days. We will have Marshall Food with dishes that used to be made in barracks. In mythological section, we will talk of food mentioned in epics and religious book with Devdutt Pattanaik. Similarly, we have Temple food, East Indian food and lot of more,” he says.

The cuisines have been done in a very rustic manner. “We have not tweaked the method of preparing food and did it in a very authentic manner. Wherever required, we cooked in earthen and wooden pots on chulah (wood fire). The entire cooking has been done in pure ghee as that used to be the medium of cooking in the bygone era,” he says.

The chef has also recently shot episodes for his show Ranveer on the Road in Turkey and Austria. He is also looking forward to visit his hometown soon. “I want to come early but looking at my schedule I hope to visit Lucknow in August,” he says on a signing off note.