For all those who have sniggered at “halwai-Chinese”, chaat masala- or curry leaves-infused chowmein, here is news: A chef from Hyderabad I met this week tells me of a secret “masala” now being used to enhance flavours of restaurant-biryanis — and here I will differentiate these from the authentic version of the kachche gosht ki biryani.
Lest you think it involves some secret proportions of flavourful green cardamoms, peppercorns, mace, cinnamon and the like, abandon all such thoughts at once. The secret in this case is the not-so-secret monosodium glutamate (MSG) or ajinomoto, as it is called by its trade name, a well-known but somewhat contentious enhancer of meaty flavour (umami). But while a Chinese-biryani may be our latest contribution to a khichdi culture, its emergence is hardly surprising — and not just because India has been/is such a melting pot.
While holding up the modern (and should I say Western?) emphasis on fresh and seasonal ingredients, seafood, meats, veggies, all lightly cooked so as to retain their natural textures and flavours — what we sometimes tend to forget is another very different strain of cooking in our culinary traditions: One that prided itself on disguising flavours and “tricking” guests — somewhat along the same lines as molecular gastronomy today, that dabbles in the chemistry of food and presents a caviar that may, in fact, be watermelon!
Not that my friends, while we grew up in Lucknow, in the 1980s and 1990s, thought of such trickery as a “wow experience” at all. Their mothers, anxious about vitamins and good health, would purée or grate or boil and mash veggies such as parwal/patol, bottle gourd and pumpkin, transforming them into curries, parantha-dough, pies or halvas —all natural flavours and textures distorted. In Goa, I sampled an egg curry rustled up by our host, a Mrs Fernandez who ran a charming B&B. This was made with her fish curry masala, she said, with the eggs beaten into the sauce. Her children, she explained, didn’t like eggs.
But even more formal menus have always incorporated “trick” treats. Belonging to a community devoted to the culinary art has meant being subject to many experiments (and many classics) right through my childhood. The Mathur Kayasthas prided themselves on being “cultured”; music, dance, food, drink and marriages strictly within the small community being primarily connoted by that. Having been courtiers in Muslim courts meant acquiring such “sophistication” as a taste for non-vegetarianism, Urdu poetry and liquor-ed soirees, and nawabi ways of addressing and dressing. And many of these manners gradually became institutionalised.
On Dusshera, it was — and is — a tradition to cook kaliya, home-style lamb curry, deliciously tender, its masala concocted with a fineness that only royal Avadhi kitchens may have matched. But while most of the community ate its way through pasandas and yakhni pulaos, nargisi koftas (hard-boiled eggs coasted with spicy mince, in a gravy), and shammi kebabs stuffed with onions and mint, many of the womenfolk who were vegetarians decided to invent their own gourmet meals, approximating non-vegetarian flavours, while making sense of Vaishnavite Hinduism.
And thus we have delicacies such as moong ki daal ki kaleji masquerading as, of all things, liver, moong ki daal ke shaami, self explanatory, but which may easily convert you to vegetarianism — fresh salads and sautéed vegetables be damned, and even naqli omelette (rustled up from sliced bread, from what I remember) and naqli gobhi! The last was made up of radish and zucchini but with such liberal bhuno-ing and use of masala that, yes, you could be fooled into taking it for cauliflower, a vegetable that was strictly seasonal and elusive except in winter.
In his later years, my grandfather turned vegetarian, became more “religious”, if you’ll call it that. But that didn’t mean that he gave up his zest for life and “grand living”: He continued dabbling in poetry, wrote quatrains from the Ramayana in Urdu, the language everyone his generation considered “elite”, not “Muslim”, and continued to savour food. One of the joys of his lunch table was a thick curry of raw banana, seasoned with dried fenugreek. “Doesn’t it taste just like fish?” he would invariably ask. Today, as I cut into a whole, steamed fish, Cantonese-style, I don’t know what would’ve been my reply. It was a delicious cuisine alright.
