Every great Indian kitchen carries a map of migration. The food Nozhat Choudry cooks traces one of the most beautiful of them — the journey of the Mughal court table as it moved south from Lucknow into the Deccan, and learned, in Hyderabad, to speak a second language.
In the north, the Nawabi kitchens of Awadh perfected restraint: the slow steam of dum pukht, the marriage of cream and nuts, gravies built in quiet whispers of warm, aromatic spices. When that sensibility reached Hyderabad, it met the coconut, the sesame, the tamarind and the green chilli of the Deccan, and turned bolder, earthier, unmistakably its own. This dinner sits on that seam. It opens in the cool elegance of the north and closes in the warmth of the south, and asks you to taste the distance between them.
Nozhat learned all of it at one table. Her mother, Akhtar Bano, brought Hyderabad to the north of England in the 1960s — in spice tins, in muscle memory, in the patience of a properly sealed pot. Everything she understands about feeding people, she learned watching her mother. She has three daughters of her own now, and feeds them the way she was fed, which is how a table outlives the person who set it. The Private Dastarkhwan, a supper club she hosts in Oakville, is her attempt to keep her mother's table laid. This evening at The Depanneur is the first time she brings it to a larger room.
She cooks the way her mother did — every spice ground by hand, the best produce she can find, nothing rushed. By day she's a vice president at a biotech company, working on a gene therapy to restore sight in inherited blindness; by night and on weekends she's at the stove, the way she has been all her life. That obsession has followed her into kitchens and cooking classes from Tokyo and Singapore to Milan, Paris, Tashkent and London — but it always returns here, to her mother's recipes, reshaped by her own hand and never rewritten past recognition.
Four courses, from Lucknow to Hyderabad. Cooked with love, as her mother would have wanted.
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Roasted Pumpkin, Coconut & Green Chilli Velouté
A reflection of how the Mughal kitchens of the north evolved in the coconut-rich Deccan. Ontario pumpkin slowly roasted and blended with coconut milk, ginger and fresh green chilli, finished with toasted pumpkin seeds and a spinach pakora.
Bhagaray Baingan
One of the defining dishes of Hyderabad. Baby eggplants simmered in Hyderabad's signature sesame, peanut, coconut and tamarind masala, served with plain rice.
Dum Ka Gosht
The legacy of Awadhi dum cooking carried south and made distinctly Hyderabadi. Lamb slowly braised with browned onions, mace, green cardamom and yogurt until meltingly tender, served with sheermal for soaking up the fragrant gravy.
Modern Shahi Tukra
A Nawabi classic, reshaped. Caramelized brioche, saffron rabri cream, pistachio and saffron gelato, brown butter tuile and macerated autumn fruit.
Kahwa
A fragrant infusion of green tea and cardamom, served with a small piece of home-made pistachio barfi.
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Nozhat Choudry is the cook and host behind The Private Dastarkhwan, an intimate supper club in Oakville devoted to the Hyderabadi and Awadhi cooking she learned at her mother's table. Born in West Yorkshire and trained as a scientist — she holds a PhD from Imperial College London and came to Canada for a postdoctoral fellowship at McMaster — she now leads clinical development for a gene therapy in inherited retinal disease. Her evenings and weekends belong to the stove, where she cooks for the friends, family and three daughters who are the first to taste everything that later reaches a guest. A lifelong cook with a library of more than three hundred cookbooks and a habit of grinding every spice by hand, she has taken cooking classes from Tokyo to Tashkent, Milan to Paris, in pursuit of one thing: great food, cooked with love, from the finest produce and spices. @theprivatedastarkhwan
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Every week, The Depanneur invites Toronto's best culinary talents to lead fun, hands-on workshops and supper clubs. @thedepanneur
