Traditional recipes

Crisp puris stuffed with spiced urad dal paste, served with a thin, tangy potato curry. A classic breakfast of Agra and western UP.

Small puffed kachoris filled with spiced urad dal, eaten with a hot potato–pumpkin curry: the morning street breakfast of Varanasi.

A rustic winter curry of crushed fresh green peas, potatoes and spices, loved across eastern UP and eaten with rice.

Varanasi's own chaat: a hot, tangy mash of tomatoes and potatoes cooked in ghee, topped with crushed namak para and sweet syrup.

Flattened rice tossed in ghee with fresh green peas, spices and a little milk or malai: a winter breakfast of Varanasi.

Crisp potato patties fried slowly on a flat tawa, topped with white pea curry, curd and chutneys.

Melt-in-the-mouth kebabs of very finely minced meat with many spices, the most famous kebab of Lucknow.

Soft, fragrant minced-meat kebabs cooked on skewers over charcoal, named after the town of Kakori near Lucknow.

Patties of minced meat cooked with chana dal and whole spices, ground and pan-fried, often stuffed with onion and mint.

Delicately spiced biryani in which part-cooked rice and mutton yakhni are layered and sealed to finish on slow heat (dum).

Mutton shank stew slow-cooked overnight with spices and thickened with flour, eaten with soft kulcha at dawn.

Mutton braised slowly in curd, browned onion paste and aromatic spices, rich but gently spiced.

Chicken curry in which onions go in twice: once ground into the gravy and once as crunchy chunks at the end.

River fish cooked in a sharp mustard-oil gravy with onion, garlic and spices, eaten with rice in eastern UP.

A slightly sweet, saffron-tinted bread made with milk and ghee and baked in a tandoor, a speciality of Lucknow.

A flaky, many-layered paratha made with ghee-folded dough, a bread of the Awadhi table.

One-pot yellow rice cooked with potatoes, peas, cauliflower and whole spices: the home-style vegetable pulao of Uttar Pradesh.

Sweet saffron rice cooked with ghee, sugar, dry fruit and cardamom, served at Awadhi feasts.

Rice or coarse grain slow-cooked in buttermilk with a light tempering, a cooling dish of dry Bundelkhand.

Sour curd and besan curry simmered slowly with soft gram-flour fritters, eaten with rice across Uttar Pradesh.

Simple pigeon-pea dal tempered with ghee, cumin and hing: the daily dal of the Uttar Pradesh thali.

Buckwheat-flour puris with a simple potato curry made with rock salt and no grains, eaten during Navratri fasts.

Translucent, firm sweets made by cooking ash gourd in sugar syrup, the best-known sweet of Agra.

Brown, grainy milk fudge made by roasting khoya with sugar until caramel-coloured, the famous prasad of Mathura.

Delicate layers of milk skin scraped from slowly simmered milk, sweetened and stacked; a dairy sweet of Braj.

A cloud-light winter froth of milk churned with saffron and sugar, traditionally left overnight under the open sky to catch the dew.

Crisp pastry parcels filled with khoya and nuts, sealed with a clove, fried and soaked in syrup.

Flower-shaped coils of urad dal batter fried in ghee and soaked in sugar syrup; Jaunpur's best-known sweet.

Brittle, flaky winter sweet of sesame and jaggery, pounded and pulled into thin layers.

Half-moon pastries stuffed with roasted khoya, dry fruit and coconut, fried in ghee; the sweet of Holi in Braj and across UP.

Fine roasted vermicelli cooked in ghee and thick sugar syrup with khoya and dry fruit, the Eid sweet of Lucknow.

Dense, slow-reduced milk kulfi served with cornflour noodles (falooda) and rose syrup, a summer treat of Lucknow.

Chilled milk blended with a paste of almonds, fennel, melon seeds, pepper, rose petals and cardamom; the drink of Holi and Mahashivratri.

Thick, sweet churned curd served in a clay kulhad and crowned with malai, a symbol of the old lanes of Varanasi.

A sweet-sour summer drink of roasted or boiled raw mangoes, roasted cumin and black salt, taken to beat the heat.

Betel leaf folded around sweet gulkand, fennel and coconut, eaten after meals; Banarasi paan is a GI-tagged speciality.

Whole Indian gooseberries cooked slowly in sugar syrup until translucent; Pratapgarh's amla is its One District One Product.

Pickle of raw jackfruit pieces, part-cooked and preserved in mustard oil with mustard, fennel and kalonji.

Crisp fried masoor dal and gram-flour sev mixed with nuts and tangy spices; Agra's famous namkeen.

Steamed rolls of rice-flour dough, a traditional food of the Tharu community of the Terai, eaten with chutney or curry.

Soft urad dal fritters soaked in water and served in chilled spiced curd with sweet and green chutneys, a Holi favourite in UP.

Blanched bathua (lamb's quarters) greens folded into spiced curd, a winter side dish of the UP countryside.