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“I was 20 years old working as a dishwasher in a Mexican grill in Canada, and one day, I was asked to manage the grill. I discovered I enjoyed cooking for people,” said Sameer Sewak, a pilot-turned-chef living on the outskirts of Dehradun, Uttarakhand. He runs a cloud kitchen, Na Cheez, and an Airbnb called Lal Kothi, a beautiful place where travellers can stay in spacious rooms with windows overlooking green mountains.
The accommodation boasts minimal interiors and has a kitchen from which Sameer Sewak and his mother, Swapna Sewak, present Awadhi delicacies to customers and guests, including Indian celebrities like Mrunal Thakur, Swara Bhaskar, Vishal Bhardwaj, and Gulzar Sahab. In the capital city of Uttarakhand, where one can taste the best of Pahadi cuisine, Chef Sewak is offering people a taste of Awadhi food, native to the Awadh region that encapsulates North Indian and Southern Nepal.
Image Credit: Sameer Sewak/ Instagram
It is not just kebabs and biryani that you will spot on the exclusive menu of Lal Kothi and Na Cheez, but also unique dishes from Awadhi cuisine and some sumptuous delicacies from the Uttaranchal cuisine.
Chef Sameer, who is a licensed pilot from Canada, said, “I learnt to cook Maggi at the age of 10, and only knew how to cook it until I was 20.” As a child, he saw his grandmother, Sheila Sewak, cooking on a chulha and feeding her family and guests. “Hosting used to be a huge thing in our house,” he added while sharing that her grandmother’s yakhni pulao was loved by everyone who ever visited their home.
Growing up in Agra, Uttar Pradesh, Sameer Sewak picked up on passion for food from his father, Regginald Sewak. “He is fond of pasta and chicken korma,” he said, adding, “but I learnt cooking from my mother. She taught me everything about Awadhi food that I grew up eating.”
Image Credit: Sameer Sewak/ Instagram
Taste Of Awadhi Cuisine In Uttarakhand
When Sameer Sewak started the Airbnb in Dehradun, he received requests from people who wanted to try his food, even when they were passing by the city and could not stay at Lal Kothi. Owing to the requests, he started Na Cheez, allowing his fans to order and taste delicious food prepared by him. “I started taking orders during the pandemic, in 2020, and the food was well received,” he said.
While setting up a home in Dehradun, he observed that his family and friends were craving the kind of food he knew but could not find anywhere in the city. This encouraged him to start his catering venture. Initially, he cooked what he knew best.
Among the first dishes he ever cooked for his guests at Lal Kothi were mutton shami kebabs and chicken biryani. The reception and encouragement led him to experiment with the ingredients. He saw that vegetarians in the city were also craving a similar palate, which led him to experiment with the ingredients.
He tried plant-based options for kebabs. After experimenting with many ingredients, his recipe panned out the way he expected with jackfruit (kathal) and chickpeas (chana). “Veg kebabs had the same texture and smells as meat-based kebabs.”
The next stop on the experiment train was biryani. He made it with kathal and championed the recipe. “Jackfruit brings the same nazakat (tenderness) to biryani as mutton does,” he added. He also shared that his kathal biryani is more famous among his friends, family, and customers than mutton or chicken biryani.
Sameer Sewak said, “It takes more effort to cook kathal biryani than mutton biryani. Jackfruit can’t be overcooked. Moreover, to infuse the same richness to veg biryani, I cook it with dahi (curd) and many Indian spices.” The same also features a few Pahadi dishes like jakhiya raita, jakhiya aloo, and kachnar raita, made using spring season flowers.
Lesser-Explored Awadhi Dishes Gaining Popular Amid Pahadi Delicacies
Sameer Sewak, with no professional training in cooking, is now a seasoned chef who continues experimenting with ingredients. With useful insights from his mother, he continues to experiment with dishes to offer something new to his guests who so fondly gorge on the food prepared by him.
His father’s retirement plan included him indulging in farming, which he continues to do in the kitchen garden of Lal Kothi, making it easier for Chef Sameer to get his hands on fresh and seasonal produce like coriander, tomatoes, spinach, mint, and bottle gourd.
Apart from creating new dishes following the guide of Awadhi cuisine, Sameer Sewak is also introducing people to some old charms of the Awadh region. One of those delicacies is lauki-mutton, which is prepared by cooking mutton with 90% spices and the remaining meat is cooked with lauki that absorbs all the flavour. Similarly, he also cooks palak gosht and dal mutton. He added that these dishes were not on the menu but often he had cooked for his guests and they liked them.
Image Credit: Sameer Sewak/ Instagram
