Biriyani FOR BAKR-ID

18th and 19th-century stories tell us how Biriyani - greatest gift that Islamic cuisine has given to the gourmet world – became popular

The festival of Bakr-id rustles up aromas and recipes of mutton biriyani. I do recall my students in school bringing tiffin boxes of biriyani the following day after the festival and the classroom filled with the aromatic splendour of their mom’s biriyani. The greatest gift that Islamic cuisine has given to the gourmet world is the biriyani. My friend Khushwant Singh was a biriyani lover. Sadia Dehlvi used to take him for biriyani. One day in December I took him the biriyani prepared by my mom.

My mom used to cook a haryali biriyani because her best friend was a Moplah. My dad would go to INA market and get a leg of lamb which was cut and tossed into a green masala and then cooked to tenderness. Once the meat was cooked, it was layered with half-cooked rice, the cloves green chilli and cumin in the rice gave it an almost subtle yet royal essence. Then it was layered with the cooked lamb in a handi and set on low flame until the rice was fully flaky and plumped, and ready to be served.

Khushwant was a gourmet researcher too. “18th and 19th-century

Despite all the different twists to the dish, like the Sindhi Biryani, Memoni Biryani, Bohri Biryani, it is actually Lucknow that lays ultimate claim to it

stories tell us how the rice dish became popular in India,” Khushwant said. “Lucknow was called Awadh and with the Mughuls ruling at the time, the royal palace introduced the Awadhi Biryani.”

“Research gourmands say that before the advent of Mumtaz Mahal, the granddaughter-in-law of the great

Akbar, he made Asfa Jahi the Nizaam of the great state of Hyderabad. The Nizaam wanted his state to own the royal dish thus, he had his kitchen give it a twist and the outcome is the legendary Hyderabadi Biryani. Tipu Sultan of Karnataka spread the biryani to Mysore, giving us the Mysoree Biryani, but the most special biryani may be the one that does not have meat. The nawabs of the region hired vegetarian cooks to create the meatless biryani and thus Tahiri came into being.”

Bizma Timzi, the gourmand editor says, “Despite all the different twists to the dish, like the Sindhi Biryani with potatoes, the Memoni Biryani with teez masala, the Kacha Goshat Biryani that is cooked in garam masala spices without tomatoes and the Bohri Biryani, very popular in Karachi and Bombay, it is actually Lucknow that lays ultimate claim to it. The Awadhi Dum Biryani is a gift that the Muslims of the Mughul era gave to the northern part of India.

The specialty of the Awadhi Dum Biryani is that the meat is also halfcooked like the rice, and the dish is brought to cooking perfection through the dum pukth style of cooking, almost like the ancient times when berian was buried in the ground and cooked to perfection.” My mom’s recipe was the Hara Masala Biryani. It cooks to perfection; the taste is royal and the aroma Mughlai.

Here is my mom’s biriyani learned in 1950: