Dine like a mogul
Or more accurately, how to dine like a Grand Mogul. Here’s a complete checklist:
As the able administrator of your vast empire, you're always on the move. But as a Mogul, everything everywhere must be exactly as you would like it. To avoid nasty surprises, always send a team to get things ready in advance of your arrival. Make sure that they have prior approval to requisition “50 camels to carry the supplies, 50 well-fed cows to provide milk, 200 coolies to carry china... [and] a military contingent.”
Like the Mogul Akbar, don’t let your men know when you’re planning to eat, but whenever you do, demand at least a hundred dishes within the hour, never mind that you don’t plan to finish most of them.
Take your victuals under blue skies always. Dining rooms are for accountants.
Get your men to prepare the dining area for you first by laying a chatai, a mat woven from the leaves of a date palm, followed by an exquisite Persian carpet, and then a chaddar, a white calico carpet, and finally a dastarkhanna, a white table cloth. You and your guests shall dine while seated cross-legged. Dining tables and chairs are for lawyers.
You’ll be eating communally with the first three fingers of your right hand. Pass around a pot of water and basin at the start of the meal so guests can wash their hands. While the lack of silverware might seem like Economy Class dining, real luxury is yet to come.
Make sure that your Minister of the Kitchen (What? You don't have one?) has personally inspected and tasted every dish for poison before it is served to you. The Minister must attach his seal to and write the names of the contents on each dish.
To serve: Servers enter in a line, bearing gold and silver dishes wrapped in red cloths, and jade ( a well-known antidote to poison) and porcelain dishes, inlaid with semi-precious stones, wrapped in white cloths. If you're feeling penitent for your vulgar excess, obey the religious prohibition on gold dishes and hurl them violently to show your repentance.
Set aside a portion of your food for the dervishes.
Do not drink water with your meal as per religious traditions. If you're going to go ahead and ignore the strictures on alcohol, at least wait till after your meal. While the Mogul fondness for alcohol is well-known, they never mixed their food and spirits.
When the meal is done, pass around a pot of water and a basin again for the guests to wash their hands.
Finish with some coffee--imported by Portuguese traders-- and cigarettes. In the eternal words of the poet Zatalli: "Smoking tobacco is a pleasant occupation,/ Which banishes worry and sorrow,/ It is a companion in times of loneliness,/ And a cure for indigestion."
Sources:
Salma Husain in The Emperor’s Table: The Art of Mughal Cuisine (2009).
Abul Fazl ‘Allami in the Ain-I-Akbari, as translated by H. Blochmann, M. A. (1873).
R. Nath in The Private Life of the Mughals of India (1526-1803 A.D.) (2004).
Annemarie Schimmel in The Empire of the Great Mughals: History, Art and Culture (2004).