Muzaffar Ali (centre) and Meera Ali (standing left) with daughter Sama (seated left), son Shaad, daughter-in-law Aarti Patkar (seated right) and grandson Imaan feature in the just-launched title, Dining with the Nawabs by Meera Ali and Karam Puri

The walls of Anhalwara Palace in the idyllic Kotwara - a village in the Lakhimpur Kheri district of Uttar Pradesh - have lived through a thousand stories. The most amusing, however, tend to be those associated with food. Even today, the family cracks up at the memory of an episode that occurred in their royal kitchen in the spring of 1952. An Urdu daily editor, who had travelled all the way to interview Syed Sajid Husain - the then Raja of Kotwara - couldn't contain himself on seeing the nawab dig into the delicacies at the table. Trying hard not to break away from Lucknowi etiquette, the editor refused to eat a single morsel from dawn to dusk, only to be mistaken for a thief when he hungrily crept into the kitchen later that night.