If you want to start a full-fledged foodie war, ask a group of gourmandising friends where they’d find the best biryani. Stand back, make sure no one has access to sharp instruments, and watch from a safe distance.
Hyderabad’s kucchi biryani will have its adherents; Awadhi biryani connoisseurs swear that they have the most delicate, refined recipes; Kerala has a variation every hundred kilometres or so; and even in Delhi, the Dum Pukht versus Old Delhi debates are incendiary.
Pratibha Karan — a formidable cook in her own right, and also a kind of walking culinary library — collects the recipes and lets us decide in her iconic cookbook, Biryani (Random House). Like any serious foodie, she’s more interested in the taste and texture of the dish than in its etymology, and having offered the reader several origin myths, she moves on to the real issue: the recipes.
It’s when you try them out that you recognise the beauty of Karan’s explanation of the difference between the biryani and pulao. There is a massive variation in recipes here, from the humble alu-tamater biryani to the robust Kabab Biryani, the strong Coorg Mutton Biryani down to the delicate Motiye ki Biryani, where jasmine essence perfumes the dish.
Cook just a few recipes from Karan’s book, and you’ll recognise her voice: “The cardinal principle of a biryani is that it is made by the method of layering in a pan, with rice being the first layer and the last layer, and meat, fish, poultry or vegetables constituting the middle layer. … In the pulaos, however, there is no layering and the rice and all the other ingredients are cooked together, in a kind of potpourri.”
Biryani raises several interesting questions. The North Indian biryanis share a different array of spices — cardamom, cinnamon, garam masala, caraway seeds — from the Bengal and Bangladeshi biryanis (mustard seed joins the usual array), and coconut, curry leaves, peppercorns and cashew nuts can be found in the coastal biryanis of Andhra, Tamil Nadu and Kerala. The North, especially the Awadhi biryanis, experiment more with floral essences — jasmine, rose — and scented fruits, as with the orange-juice infused biryani. But screwpine water and rose water travel across several states, as flavouring and scenting agents, and the tradition of cooking the biryani in the final stage on dum — over a slow fire, sometimes with hot coals placed on the pot and on the lid.
Like Awadhi connoisseurs, and His Highness of Sailana, Karan reminds us gently of a key truth about a good biryani: it is not just casseroled rice, but a test of any good cook’s skills, meant to rule the table proudly rather than share it with any accompaniments. The advent of the buffet has allowed us to forget this essential point of biryani etiquette: at an elaborate meal, HH of Sailana, normally polite to a fault, couldn’t stop himself from intervening when one of his guests reached for a dal-gosht. Biryani, he said, could be eaten with raita or a pachadi, but it would please him so much if his guest would save the dal-gosht for the second course.
At home, I can’t stop experimenting. I lack the courage to start with the Katchi Biryani —timing and the quality of meat are key to getting this dish right, or you’ll end with half-cooked meat, or soggy rice — but “Maya’s Biryani” — a robust mutton biryani preparation — is an easy lead-in. The prawn biryanis come out perfect, and the pork chops biryani is an unexpected success.
And along with the home cooking, there’s a new savour to visiting Matka Peer for the humble biryani served there, or to reminding myself to look for the perfect Katchi Biryani the next time I’m in Hyderabad so that I know what to aspire to.
A really good cookbook is so much more than a collection of recipes, and Karan’s Biryani does the three things you want it to do — gets you back in the kitchen, wakes up your taste buds, and revives old, perfect taste memories.
[Nilanjana S Roy is a freelance writer and editor]
