Recreating Old And New Delhi’s Famous Chaats With A Twist Of Cranberries

Delhiites have an everlasting love affair with food. You name a dish and we can easily find it in this amazing capital. However, if there is one thing that Delhi is known for exclusively and that is for the array of street food, chaat being the most popular one. The old side of the capital shares an exquisite relationship with food which began during the Mughal era. To taste these authentic recipes with a twist of cranberries, we recently attended a month-long festival at The Leela Palace, Chanakyapuri. This festival is a specially curated event of reimagined chaats which is happening across 11 Leela Hotels and 21 Punjab Grill outlets nationally, as part of a promotion in India by the US Cranberry Marketing Committee, under the aegis of the US Department of Agriculture.

Food historian and author Anoothi Vishal says, “Delicacies include disappearing and highly nuanced Old Delhi chaats like Kulle, a Kayasth special, and the Delhi aloo tikki, which is very different from other regional iterations, in that it is stuffed with chana daal, unlike the Agra bhalla or Lucknowi tikiya. Kulle, meanwhile, are literally cups, where fruit is scooped out and traditionally filled with chickpeas and pomegranate seeds in a dressing of lime with ginger slivers. We have added US cranberries which are very versatile in their flavour profile and make for another layer of flavour in the melange”.

America’s Original Superfruit US Cranberries, with their versatility in terms of flavour profile are ideal as an ingredient for an array of chaat recipes. They can be added to existing chaats, replacing other elements that may be sweet-sour or astringent, and can be used to create so many unique chaat recipes.

The festival called as ‘Sunehri Dhoop’ is running across all Punjab Grill outlets from December 1st- December 31st and the festival Cranberries, Chaat and Chai is running across 11 The Leela hotels from December 1st- December 31st 2021.