Delhiwale: Winter’s tasty essence

It is looking like fistfuls of soft ice scooped out of a melting glacier. And it is embedded with freshly plucked dark red roses.
Mubarak. The season’s first sighting of the frothy-white daulat ki chaat took place last Friday, close to the remnants of the Walled City’s stone walls, near Ansari Road, outside the Hindi Park.
This wintertime dessert is made of milk, cream and dew. Each daulat ki chaat vendor has his own version of the dish, but the core of each story is structured around the same plot. Undiluted buffalo milk is whisked with cream (which is also obtained from buffalo milk) under the night’s clear moon, and within hours the cold dew—the oas—causes froth to appear atop the churned milk. The bit about the moon is romantic. It is also pure myth.
The venerable Rajesh Kumar, Purani Dilli’s “khandani” daulat ki chaat maker, gives a believable version of the story: “At night, we mix buffalo milk with cream, then leave the container uncovered on the roof for the oas (dew) to settle down on it. We get up at three in the morning and vigorously churn it for three to four hours.”
Rajesh Kumar operates his daulat carts at four places in the Walled City—Seeta Ram Bazar where he lives, Dariba Kalan, and at two spots near Fatehpuri Masjid. This year, he began his operations, as always, with the arrival of the Navratri festival, which concluded around a week ago. Indeed, Old Delhi’s many chaotic lanes must have started filling up since then with more and more daulat vendors. Many vendors also happen to be of the same clan — If one cart, let’s say in Gali Mandir Wali, is being administered by a chacha, another cart on another street nearby is likely to be manned by the chacha’s bhatija; or it could be mama-bhanja, or jeeja-sala, or, of course, baap-beta.
A full daulat platter holds 10 kilograms of the dessert. The thick golden crust on the top is made of kesar pista. While handing the dish to the customer, the vendor garnishes it with bhoora (ground sugar) and roasted khoya (condensed milk). On its own, daulat ki chaat is totally sugar-free, asserts Rajesh Kumar.
The first impression on tasting the daulat is… so light and fleeting, and it vanishes so soon from the mouth.
As the winter ends with the Holi festival, the daulat ki chaat too vanishes, but not the vendors. They simply shift to other street specialities.