Fragrant smelling victory

FOODIE

Dancer Rani Khanam makes Bihari biryani the traditional way.

This is supposed to be a conversation about food but it also lands up being an involved discussion on Islam, the place of women within it, and the need to reform. Rani Khanam, Sufi kathak dancer, has just performed a piece on the occasion of Women's Day incorporating dance, drama and real-life stories, some personal, some in the public domain, and she is brimming over.

There is the instance of a cousin divorced over the phone, the triple talaq. And stories like that of Imrana, raped by father-in-law, told to treat husband like her son! The performance is at the behest of the National Legal Authority and Khanam is clutching a thick folder full of research material.

"Who has given them the right to issue fatwas?" she says of the clerics, "Why shouldn't people go to civil courts?" she adds, warming up to her subject, forgetting perhaps for a moment the biryani she's cooking today. But to even mention that would be to trivialise, to take away from the passion.

A recipient of the prestigious ACC Fellowship Grant from New York for her research "World dance and Islamic culture", Khanam says that at least 65 per cent of kathak can be traced back to Iranian tehzeeb. The rest came from the tradition of the kathavachaks in the Hindi heartland.

But today, it is resoundingly Indian, in fact, the only north Indian classical form. Something similar can be said of the biryani she's cooking today. Akhani biryani is resoundingly Bihari, a version of the famous yakhni pulao, made in stock, a product of the Muslim courts of medieval India.

This is the recipe that her mother cooked and that Khanam still does for die-hard friends, who claim that to sample her cooking is to forget all else. We are waiting to try it out.

The onions have been browned, spices put in a little muslin bag or potli, and the rice is ready to simmer "" in a traditional degchi, the likes of which no modern kitchen perhaps knows. "People these days cook biryani in pressure cookers," Khanam exclaims. She, however, will show us the traditional way.

While the rice is still simmering, we go back to her as a Muslim woman in the performing arts. Wasn't there any opposition? "When people realised that I wanted to dance professionally, they'd look at me in a strange manner," says Khanam, remembering the early days after she moved to Delhi when she would get up to practice in the wee hours, at the time of the morning namaaz.

Khanam would have to dance with a cloth tied to her ghungroos to muffle the noise. "My vindication came when the same people who had seen me as lowly saw my photo in the newspaper and asked me to teach dance to their young granddaughter," she says. The victory turned out sweet, the biryani fragrant.

FAVOURITE RECIPE

AKHANI BIRYANI

For the stock
3 tbsp whole coriander
3 tbsp whole fennel
3 pods garlic
1 inch piece ginger
3 big onions, halved
Zeera
1 stick cinnamon
2-3 green cardamoms
1 black cardamom

Tie all this into a potli and boil in four and a half cups of water for 10 minutes. Keep aside.

1 kg chicken
700 gm rice, soaked at least for 30 minutes
Oil to fry
7 onions, sliced and browned for garnishing
2 tbsp fresh garlic and ginger paste
Paste of 200 gm fresh coriander leaves and 4-5 green chillies

Heat oil and add a little sabut garam masala. When it begins to crackle, add the ginger-garlic paste and stir for two to three minutes. Now add the chicken and a little water. Cook for four minutes. Add the green paste now, and salt, and sprinkle a little water. Cover and steam cook till the chicken is almost done. Add the rice. Now take the stock and discard the potli. Add this to the chicken and rice and cook till the rice is done. Serve hot, topped with browned onions.