Gurus and Mughals
1469 – 1708
Two Punjabs
1947 – today
Through the ages
The Punjabi breakfast of stuffed paratha and white butter, and the winter and festival sweets of the halwai's shop.
Stuffed tandoor bread with chole, thick lassi in steel glasses, and fried fish: the dhaba food of Amritsar.
Mustard greens slow-cooked with butter and eaten with flatbread of maize: the taste of a Punjabi winter.
The warm sweet of flour, sugar and ghee given to everyone at the end of Sikh worship.
Nihari and paye for breakfast, halwa puri on Sundays, and the food streets of the old city by night.
The clay oven sunk in the ground, and the shared village oven where women baked their rotis together.
Spiced chickpeas with puffed, deep-fried bread: the Sunday breakfast of Amritsar, Lahore and Delhi.
The comfort food of every Punjabi home: red kidney beans with rice, and yoghurt curry with fritters.
The famous sweet of Multan: a dense, brittle toffee of wheat, milk, sugar and ghee, studded with nuts.
The winter season when sugarcane is crushed and its juice boiled in great pans into golden gur.