August 10 – 14, 2025
This learning experience is a multi-sensory food delight. Not only for the literary, this festival will offer pleasure to non-cooking foodies, home cooks, aspiring chefs and food history aficionados. Led by renowned food historian Dr. Tarana Husain Khan (profile below) , this experience brings to your taste buds forgotten Rampur dishes which linger on your palate like an Ishiguro novel. You learn the basics of Rampuri cuisine, hear and see fascinating food stories and go home with a booklet of recipes to recreate the flavours of Rampur in your home. We also give you some secret spice mixes!
Dr. Khan will be supported by another Rampur native – Aslam (profile below), who comes from a long line of Khansamas. Together they have worked on reviving this culinary tradition. During these three days this team will reveal the micro techniques of Rampuri style of cooking like bits of flash fiction. You will taste many Rampur culinary marvels which would have been extinct but for this amazing duo. Every lunch will have cook-and-talk sessions where 2-3 dishes will be cooked and served. Since we cannot cook all the dishes at the festival (Rampur cuisine is vast), we will have a tasting menu of some iconic and rare Rampuri dishes for every dinner except the first.
Like a slow build-up to a fabulous climax, Rampur cuisine is all about slow cooking techniques to enhance the flavours. As time flows around the cooking pots, you get to experience the stories and textures of Rampuriyat.
Note: While Rampuri Cuisine is heavy on non-veg, delectable vegetarian options will also be a part of every meal.
Schedule
August 10: Dastarkhwan e Rampur
After introductions, we dive in with a brief idea about Rampur cuisine from its travels from the Highlands of Afghanistan to Rampur, from the table of the nawabs to the common man. To introduce the broad brush strokes of Rampur flavours, Aslam Khansama will cook do goshta yakhni pulao and chapli kabab for dinner while introducing Rampur spices and spice mix.
August 11: From the Royal tables
The Rampur royal tables had two hundred dishes till the 1940s of which only a handful are cooked today. Our story of reviving the dishes and the sampling of some of the reimagined dishes are on the menu as we go deeper into the nitty gritty of Rampur cuisine, the little known techniques, melding of spices and flavours which makes a dish truly Rampuri. We discuss the rising curve of Rampuri cuisine as Awadhi, Mughal and Kashmiri flavours were amalgamated into the distinctly Pathan cuisine. Food stories around each dish are narrated as we watch Aslam cook the iconic taar gosh, nargisi seekh kabab and the heavenly qiwami sewain. It is said that if Rampuris had to save one dish out of the vast repertoire, it would be the taar ghost. It is not qorma, I promise you.
August 12: The Nawab, the Begum and the Khansama
What role did the nawabs and begums play in crafting the Rampur cuisine? We narrate the stories of the creative players as we immerse ourselves into the intense, complex dishes of the cuisine. This day will be about little known aspects of the triangle and the dishes on the sampling menu will be those created by this holy triangle. We cook my personal favourite Rampuri Shabdegh, Rampuri stew and mehtab kababs.
August 13: The Khansama’s Last Bow
As we draw to the end of the workshop we discuss the slide of Rampur cuisine while spotlighting the quintessential khansama whose fate was tied to the declining cuisine. We celebrate the innovative khansama as we watch Aslam prepare the Rampuri raan, explain its marination and the special stuffing that makes Rampuri raan truly unique. We pair it with satrangi pulao and anannas pulao. A decadent end to a celebration of tastebuds.
August 14: Alvida
Leave after a relaxed breakfast…. Or stay on for the long weekend (Charges extra).
Dr Tarana Husain Khan
Dr Tarana Husain Khan is a writer and food historian. She is the author of a critically acclaimed book on Rampur cuisine, Degh to Dastarkhwan: Qissas and Recipes from Rampur (Penguin Random House India), a bestselling historical fiction The Begum and the Dastan. She has co-edited and contributed to an anthology of food writings, Forgotten Foods: Memories and Recipes from Muslim South Asia (Pan Macmillan India). Her articles have been published in prominent media outlets, anthologies and research journals.
She worked as a Research Fellow at the University of Sheffield on an Arts and Humanities Research Council funded project, ‘Forgotten Food: Culinary Memory, Local Heritage and Lost Agricultural Varieties in India’(2019-2024).
Tarana’s journey into Rampur cuisine began with translating Persian cookbooks dating to 19th century housed in the Raza library. As she began cooking some of the 300 plus recipes with the traditional Rampur chefs (khansamas) under the Forgotten Foods project, they were able to revive more than 40 recipes and present them at food festivals.
Aslam Khan Khansama
Aslam Khan Khansama has generations of cooking wisdom and skills in his veins. He comes from several generations of khansamas who cooked for Rampur Nawabs at grand dinners. He started working with his father when he was merely ten years old. A skilled khansama specialising in Rampuri qorma, kababs and halwas he now works with teams of cooks for catering in Rampur and at food festivals. He worked with Tarana to recreate the forgotten dishes of Rampur.
Price: Rs. 38000 + GST (twin shared)
*Single rooms only available offsite @16k extra.
*Maximum Participants: 15
*Strict Zero Discount Policy