Get Him to the Fenugreek

No matter how accomplished you are in the kitchen, you always learn something when you cook with someone else — at least I always have. But it’s worth remembering that what you learn may be something other than what you thought you would.

I first met Chef Abdul Jalil at the London restaurant Sitaaray, which is a kind of wacky, Bollywood-themed treasure in Drury Lane. When I found out he was from Lucknow — a cosmopolitan city in northern India known for its cuisine — I immediately began asking him (through interpreters) whether he could teach me how to make a pair of dishes I’d been curious about for more than a decade. One of these was sheermal, a saffron-scented, semisweet flatbread of which there are several types found throughout southern Asia; the other was galouti kebab, in which meat (usually goat, sometimes lamb or — for Muslims or nonobservant Hindus — beef) is minced so finely that its tenderness is incomparable. The kebab is also called galawat, which means “overly tender.” The dish, it’s said, originated with the nawabs of Lucknow, who’d lost their teeth but not their desire to eat meat.

I was familiar with sheermal — I love it — and I knew it wasn’t easy to make. But after going through an hour and a half of on- and-off physical labor with Jalil, some of which was really quite strenuous — a key to good sheermal is slowly and patiently working large quantities of ghee (clarified butter) or oil into an already wet dough — I wondered whether I’d ever prepare it myself.

Months later, after a number of unsuccessful attempts at simplifying sheermal by making it in a food processor (I could make it, but I couldn’t make it well), I went back to Uncle, as the restaurant’s young people refer to Jalil, for another lesson. Forget it: sheermal is a dish I will enjoy on those occasions when someone else makes it for me.

As for the galouti kebab: it turns out I’d never eaten a properly made one, and my considered opinion about this famous preparation is that I’ll wait until I lose my teeth before trying it again. Until then, it’s overly tender.