A Recipe for the Awadhi Dum Bater

At Goya, celebrating home cooks and recipes have always been at the heart of our work. Through our series, #1000Kitchens, we document recipes from kitchens across the country, building a living library of heirloom recipes that have been in the family for 3 generations or more. In this edition, Sneha Mehta talks to Ananya Chopra about Dum Bater, an aromatic preparation that embodies the region’s syncretic culture that blends Indian and Persian influences.

This season’s stories are produced in partnership with the Samagata Foundation—a non-profit that champions meaningful projects.

When Ananya Chopra moved to Dehradun as a teenager, she first encountered the linguistic practice familiar to immigrants all over the world: code-switching. The artist’s family is from Jaunpur and Allahabad (now Prayagraj), deep in Awadh in modern-day central Uttar Pradesh, and Chopra was used to speaking in the region’s distinct courtly dialect, saying “hum” instead of “mein,” “amma” instead of “maa.” But to a young Chopra, fitting in was understandably more important than maintaining a distant connection to her roots.

“I completely changed my style of talking so no one could figure out where I was from,” she said. “But that doesn’t change that I am a person whose parents are from Uttar Pradesh, whom I used to talk like exactly.”

But as Chopra dropped the lyrical Awadhi Hindi for a more pan-Indian style bit by bit as she moved from Dehradun to Delhi, Pune, and finally to New York, where she’s lived for over a decade, she felt drawn to another facet of her culture: the cooking. Awadh’s language and its cooking mirror each other—the way people speak, so they cook and eat. The formal refinement extends to the region’s cuisine as well, and Chopra grew up eating delicate, slow-cooked dishes flavored with kewra and rose water instead of heavy cream and fiery spices. What she lost in linguistic nuance, she found herself seeking in food. And through her work as an artist who uses food as a creative medium, she interprets and translates the Awadhi cuisine of her childhood.

“Living in New York was ironically what inspired me to connect with my history and family,” she said. “I started calling my mom and cousins and asking them for recipes. Cooking was the easiest way to transport myself back to my Nani's or Amma’s house. And through my art, I could take an old recipe and make it my own.”

For Chopra, the dish that crystallizes both her memories of her grandparent’s home and the Awadhi Ganga-Jamuni tehzeeb, the region’s syncretic culture that blends Indian and Persian influences, is Dum Bater — a rich and aromatic preparation of quail, layered with the nutty depth of poppy seeds, warm whole spices, caramelized onions, and the subtle heat of yellow chili.

Small game birds like quail (bater) and partridge (teetar) were a mainstay of royal Awadhi cuisine, in the kitchens of the erstwhile Nawabs who ruled the region after the decline of Mughal power in the 18th and 19th centuries. The royal bawarchis would cook this prized delicacy for royal banquets using dum pukht, the Nawabi innovation of sealing the pot (traditionally with dough) and cooking over a slow fire. But Chopra’s recipe has much humbler origins: her grandparents in Jaunpur cooked it to celebrate the entire family coming together for holidays like Dussehra and Diwali.

“I remember all the men in the family building the fire and cooking the meat in the courtyard under a beautiful neem tree, while the women prepared the masalas in the kitchen. One or two designated adults would taste test the dish in a little ceremony before it was served. We’d eat under the wintry night sky full of stars, with my cousins playing together, the adults chatting, with the smell of ginger, garlic, and onions in the air. The collective experience of it was very beautiful,” she said.

Chopra’s family would prep and marinate around twenty quails for the meal. The women would grind the hand-roasted spices on a silbatta. These spices are what make Awadhi cuisine special, and markedly different from other North Indian cuisines: they are balanced and aromatic rather than spicy and robust. This dish uses cardamom, cloves, and cumin; fiery garam masala and red chili powder are noticeably missing.

The quails were then flash-fried, covered in the spiced yoghurt marinade. Instead of leaning on the richness of cashews and cream, they used white poppy seed paste, which imparts a creamy, nutty depth that honors the delicate game meat instead of overpowering it. It was then cooked in a large, covered pot over a low fire for about thirty minutes. This technique, known as ‘dum pukht’ originates in Persia. Dum, which means “to breathe,” is another characteristic of Awadhi cuisine. In royal Awadhi kitchens, dum cooking involved sealing the pot with dough and cooking over low heat for hours, resulting in indulgent dishes with remarkable depth of flavour like Dum Pukht Biryani and Dum Bater. But like most Awadhi home cooking, Chopra’s family’s version is a simplified take on royal dishes—still indulgent but more practical.

“It's a simple recipe, there is no drama to it. But it is beautiful and very very tasty,” she sighed.

The dish was served with lemon wedges, fresh ginger slivers, and green chilies that lent a bright, sharp contrast to the richness of the poppy seeds and yogurt gravy. The quail itself has a slightly gamey flavor, but the gentle spices mellow it out. The family ate this dish with rotis cooked on the open fire.

Like the smell of fragrant spices in the air, the simplicity inherent in Awadhi cuisine has lingered in Chopra’s life, extending to her artistic practice as well. She explores the intersection of traditional cuisine, art, and identity, creating tablescapes for which she cooks a spread of dishes and meticulously arranges them to tell a visual story. She is also the co-founder of The Salon, a New York supper club for artists and creatives. The stories and historical references that inform her work come from personal history, her travels across India, and deeply researched accounts from experts on Awadh and Uttar Pradesh cuisine like Rana Safvi and Tarana Hussain Khan.

The aesthetic of each of her preparations is impactful, but not fussy or overly embellished: for instance, she used whole lemons in her Nani’s nimbu ka achaar recipe to emphasize the fruit visually, and she serves most of her meals family style, on antique pewter platters and simple, white khadi tablecloths. Recently, for a magazine shoot, she recreated a Dutch banquet still life painting in her New York apartment, but reimagined it as an Awadhi feast: she swapped the painting’s peacock pie for a silver-leafed adorned murgh musallam, surrounded by Awadhi dishes like a fragrant biryani, galawati kebabs crafted with Lazzat-e-Taam (a spice mix of over 30 herbs, spices, and roots), and shahi tukda, adorned with tiny rosebuds. She believes that when something is at its most essential form with the simplest ingredients, when there’s nowhere to hide, only then can the flavors be fully experienced.

“I think it’s really important sometimes to eat things as they were meant to be eaten. That's why I like cleansing the recipes a little bit. And when I do that, on its own, the aesthetics change,” she said.

Chopra may no longer speak the local Awadhi dialect, but whether she is in Jaunpur or across the world in New York, she remains fluent in cooking and creating the dignified beauty that characterizes the region’s tehzeeb.

ANANYA CHOPRA’S RECIPE FOR DUM BATER

Serves: 2–4
Prep Time: 20 minutes
Cook Time: 30 minutes

Ingredients

4 whole quails, cleaned and patted dry
1 tbsp ghee
1 large red onion, thinly sliced
1 tbsp ginger paste
1 tbsp garlic paste
1/4 cup white poppy seeds
1/4 cup plain yogurt
Salt, to taste

For the Dry Spice Blend
4 green cardamom pods
3 cloves
2 tbsp coriander seeds
1 tbsp cumin seeds
1 tbsp yellow chili powder (substitute with red chili powder if unavailable)
1 tsp black peppercorns

Method

Prepare the Spice Blend: Dry roast the cardamom, cloves, coriander seeds, cumin seeds, chili powder, and peppercorns in a dry pan over medium heat until aromatic (2–3 minutes). Allow to cool, then grind to a coarse powder using a mortar and pestle or spice grinder. Set aside.
Grind the Poppy Seeds: Dry roast the poppy seeds until fragrant and lightly golden. Cool, then grind to a fine paste using a spice grinder or small food processor. Set aside.
Sear the Quails: Heat the ghee in a wide, heavy-bottomed pan. Place the quails skin-side down and sear for 3 minutes. Flip and cook the other side for 2 minutes. Remove and set aside. (Quail cooks quickly—this step is just for browning.)
Prepare the Onion Base: In the same pan, add the sliced onions and fry until golden brown. Add the ginger and garlic pastes and cook for about 3 minutes, until the raw smell disappears and the mixture is fragrant.
Make the Masala: Blend the cooked onions with yogurt until smooth. Mix this with the ground poppy seeds and the prepared spice blend. Return the masala mixture to the pan. Cook on medium-low heat for 2 minutes, stirring to prevent sticking.
Braise the Quail: Gently return the seared quails to the pan, nestling them in the masala. Cover with a lid and simmer on very low heat for 15 minutes, until the quail is tender and fully infused with the masala.
Final Seasoning: Check and adjust salt to taste.
Serve: Serve hot, garnished with thin slices of fresh ginger, green chilies, and a wedge of lemon on the side. Best enjoyed with warm flatbreads or plain rice.

Words by Sneha Mehta. Photographs by Shravya Kag. Art by Reem Madooh.
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