Of late all the print media have
been talking of food and more so on ‘Biryani’. This word itself mesmerizes
everyone. It is difficult in choosing a place which serves the right recipe of ‘biryani’.
Ask any individual they will promptly reply an outlet which serves the best
‘biryani’ but the choice is basically that suits their palate.
Interestingly in the twin city we
have two school of culinary – the Cuttack ‘Biryani’ and Bhubaneswar ‘Biryani’. In
Cuttack the famous outlets been Choudhary Bazar – Jagamohan, Gourishankar Park
– Raju Biryani, Tinkonia Bagicha – Deepak Biryani, Stadium – Aditya, Khan Nagar
– Tiger Hill and thus the list continues. And of course Royal Biryani who has
its presence in Cuttack and Bhubaneswar. In Bhubaneswar we have our own: Bapuji
Nagar – BJ’s Tandoori Delight, Green Chillies, Country Kitchen, Food Box and
other numerous outlets. Not to forget the gourmet choice i.e “Hyderabad Hub”
and “The Hyderabad House”.
Each of the above outlets has its
own distinctive taste and claim to be serving the best ‘DUM BIRYANI’. I am sure
that no one would be having the least idea of what ‘DUM’ is. The distinct
flavor and the aroma which the dish has is nothing but the ‘biryani’ essence
which is available in any grocery store.
My tryst with biryani started
when I was working in a fast food joint on a part time basis. The owner was
kind enough on sending me to the leading star hotels to learn the nuances of
kitchen operations. This gave me the opportunity to slyly observe the great
masters working either on the Dum or the mughlai cuisine. These masters were
non other than Master Chef Quershi and Master Chef Todar Mal (who was been
addressed as ‘guru bhai’. I only observed them from distance and only took note
of the timings they maintained in the process of making the ‘biryanis’. The
masala they used were closely guarded secret. They had these numerous boxes of
spice which they used in a sequence. The olfactory sense of mine along with
probing nature could finally get into mystic of the secretive masala. With much
permutation and combination I learnt the perfection and even tried out the same
in the line kitchen of the hotel. Later on I learnt that this combination of
the masla is known better known as ‘Lazzat-e-tam’. If you can master
the same then you will get that waft of flavor every time you take a portion
into your mouth.
I used to travel a lot in my last
job. This touring job gave me a lot of opportunity to learn a lot of the local
cuisine to the places I travelled. The most memorable have been my tour to
Hyderabad. When I am in that city I put up with my IPS friend. In one of my
visit I happen to come across a Khanshaba who had the lineage from the cooks
serving the Nizams of Hyderabad – ‘The Pasha Family’. The khansabha had offered
to cook a sumptuous Hyderabadi meal for my friend and one of them been the
famous ‘Hyderabadi Biryani’. Acting dumb I just stood in the kitchen to learn
the nuances of the ‘Hyderabadi Biryani’. Till date I will never forget what I
learnt from him. I observed him very keenly and made my mental notes, before
retiring in the night I made my hand notes and my culinary fundamental clear
regarding ‘Kachi Biryan’, ‘potli masala’ and ‘hyderabadi
biryani masala’.
These exposures along with my
internship in the star hotel kitchen and hands on experience of cooking
‘biryani’ have made me realize our ignorance about this royal dish. The word
‘Biryani’ has come from the Persian word ‘Berya(n)’. My personal research and
conclusion has been that biryani evolved from the army and traders who were on
the move. The cooks who accompanied them preferred to cook one pot dish rather
any elaborate meals. They cooked rice with whatever meat or fowl was available.
This became more refined to Pulao and Biryani and the distinction between the
two is very arbitrary. The only possible
distinction is that a biryani requires layering, with rice being the first
layer and the top layer and the meat in the middle. In
a pulao, there is no layering and the ingredients are cooked together.
Moreover, because biryanis are regarded as grander dishes, they tend to be
scented with kewda, rosewater, saffron etc. whereas pulaos can be simpler
dishes.
It is annoying to observe
by that restaurateurs and food writers/critics alike treat biryani as a north
Indian court dish and to go on about the Mughal court or the Nawabs of Avadh or
the Nizams or the Princely states. Of course there is a court
cuisine tradition to biryani. But it is a pan Indian dish. Nearly everywhere in
India, wherever there is a Muslim community, there is a biryani. It is annoying
that people ignore this rich tradition of regional biryanis and focus on some
mythical Mughal biryani when there are such great versions to be found in every
corner of India.
What ever the local flavor may be and the great
debate on the origin of the dish in India but finally it boils down to process
of cooking the dish: ‘KACHCHA and PUKKA’ biryani: ‘kachcha biryani’ in which raw meat is cooked with the rice and ‘pukka
biryani’ in which the meat and rice are cooked separately and then assembled
before being finished with steam for a few minutes. Some purists argue that
only a kachcha biryani counts as the real thing. A pukka biryani is a pulao
with pretensions.
Apart from the process
there is lot of difference within the region of India:
biryani is not really a north Indian dish. It is essentially a south Indian
dish. If we were to put together all the north Indian biryani recipes, we will
end up with about four basic recipes and a few others with minor variations. If
you go to the south however, the full richness of biryani dawns on you. It
isn’t just the famous Hyderabadi biryanis, it is also the richly spiced
biryanis of Kerala, the spicy (read chilly) Andhra biryani (which is not the
same as Hyderabadi biryani, is a less refined, much earthier dish) and the
biryanis of Tamil Nadu.
The reason for this is simple enough. The people of
the north are essentially wheat eaters. It is the south that prefers rice and
that is why south Indian biryanis frequently go beyond the north Indian
obsession with basmati and use more interesting breeds of rice. In fact,
wherever there is a community of rice-eaters, the biryani is likely to be more
interesting. The biryanis of east Bengal (now Bangladesh) are delicious and
unjustly ignored as is the mutton and potato biryani of Calcutta which delights
everyone who eats in that city but which is hardly known outside of Bengal.
Think
of Gujaratis as being an aggressively and exclusively Hindu community. But, in
fact, there are many Gujarati Muslims with their own cuisines. There are also
the Gujarati trading communities: the Khojas, the Bohras, the Memons etc. Each
of them has a distinctive biryani of its own. The biryanis you get in the
dhabas of Bombay – and on the street stalls – are heavily influenced by the
Gujarati tradition and have little to do with any nonsense about the Mughal
Empire.
What we often forget is that trading communities
had links with the Middle East that were entirely independent of the Delhi
Sultanate, the Lodi dynasty or the Mughals. Arab traders came to India long
before the invaders did. It was their influence that shaped the Muslim cuisines
of coastal communities. For instance, the Muslims of the Kerala coast had
nothing to do with the dynasties of north India or even with the Nizam of
Hyderabad. Their biryanis are almost entirely unrelated to the biryanis of
Lucknow and use cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, peppercorns and even star anise for
their flavor.
The north and south has it own difference. In the
north numerous dish was that of grounded mutton, while in the south it is a
great deal of minced mutton in its rice preparations. The southern fare of
Biryani is highly aromatic, chilli-hot food. The biryani uses earthy, tangy,
mind blowing hot soices, black peppercorns cinnamon, tamarind, coriander,
ginger, garlic and mint. The use of saunf or fennel was very minimal as
compared to the north. The southern influences came from four quarters, Andhra
Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Kerala.
In comparison mughlai cuisine emphasized on
lightness in colour and cooking. The tastes were more delicate. The cuisine
emphasise on the use of saffron, ground almonds and pistachios, the use of
raisins and dried fruits, the use of flower petals and itters and kewra.
Further north towards Kashmir, the food had generous amount of cumin, cloves,
fresh or dried ginger and asafetida.
The checklist and advice on how to get the best of
biryani when cooking at home:
The first advices never cook the masala on high
heat. Do not place the dekchi on high heat as this will burn the gravy a lot
faster than it should and the meat would remain dry and only be partially
cooked.
The second piece of advice: place a cover on the
vessel holding the meat and water on it. Regularly stir the meat and replace
the water which would have evaporated in the vessel.
The third piece of advice: when using goat meat use
shoulder as well as the neck. For the epicureans the ‘nali’ bone is well relished.
The marinade has to be the perfect dahi or curd
(hung) or green raw papaya. This helps in tenderizing the meat so that it can
cook fast. Try frying the onions and the
masalas very slowly so that they don’t stick to the bottom of the pan. The best
step is deep frying the whole masala so that the essence flows into the ghee
and the cooking medium. The ‘dum’ method where the dish is put in a vessel in
layers then covered with a lid and fresh dough to seal in the aromas. Then it
is placed on an iron tawa over a medium flame for fifteen to thirty minutes
depending on how much the rice has been cooked. The old school of chefs prefers
to smoke the biryani by placing live coal on onion skin on top of the rice.
Ghee with dry masala is put on the fire and the lid is closed or sealed. The
smoke trapped gives a waft of aroma which is unforgettable.
Writing on this mesmerizing dish can go on through
pages. I can conclude with a note that I still miss the “PIRU MIYAN &
DHADIA MIYAN” biryani in Cuttack. These brothers had their food outlet in Meria
Bazar and Capital cinema (Tinkonia bagicha). The aroma and flavor of the
‘biryani’ in these outlets cannot be described but experienced.
Why wait keep trying with the lazzet-e taam, potli
masala and the mesmerizing hyderbadi garam masala and I am sure you will end up
with the very best of the dish.
I conclude with the following words of the great
‘Biryani’ master “Ustad Habib Pahsa” who repeatedly says that ‘Biryani is a
process and cannot be mastered in one day’.
