The first time I
heard Hotel California, it was a version with a beautiful guitar intro from the 'Hell Freezes Over' live album. I listened to it over and over again and fell
in love with the song. Later on when someone played the 'Original', I couldn’t relate
to it. I couldn’t bring myself to accept this ‘original’, when all I loved was
the version that I first heard. No other version cut it for me, even the
Eagles’ new version played at a later concert. What’s this got to do with the
biriyani?
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Biriyani, a dish that
makes many a human go weak on the knees! A mere mention of having biriyani can
start a drool that is hard to stop. But Politics and Biriyani? You’d be
surprised.
As much as it creates
drool, it also creates tension. One man’s biriyani is another man’s tomato
rice, the ultimate insult for a biriyani. Chefs have fought over what a
biriyani should and shouldn’t be, but with a distorted history and years of
evolution, the biriyani fight isn’t going away easily. Not only home cooks,
amateur food writers and even chefs cling on to the biriyani they know and
dismiss the other versions.
But is Biriyani the
only such dish with a tormented history? Apparently not. Most cultures from around the world have some
form of a one pot rice dish. The Italian Risotto? With a mishmash of rice,
cooked to the way Italians like it is one. While the risotto clearly originated
in the Lombardy region of Italy, there are similar versions that are not appreciated
by those from the other parts of the country. Go down to West Africa and the Jollof
Rice, with its heavy tomato flavours is another one that appears to have
satiated the palates. In Kenya and South Africa, there are no synonyms, they
are called the Biriyani with different spellings, most commonly Beriyani. The Mandi in Mid
East with its tomato heavy rice and meat is also an example that tomatoes
weren’t entirely left out to create one pot dishes, and the Mandi being cooked
underground (in its classic form), one pot dish creators found creative ways to
increase flavours.
India hasn’t been
left out. In the Tamil Sangam literature, there is a dish called the Oon Soru,
that loosely translates to meat rice, a form of one pot rice dish meant to feed
soldiers. Quiz masters like to refer to a Mumtaz, who asked her cooks to
prepare a more nutritious meal when she found her soldiers weak, but the cook
ended up mixing all left overs to create the biriyani, is also doing the
rounds.
The origin of the
word biriyani is often credited to 'Beriyan', a Persian word, but if the
Biriyani originated from there, then what is Beriyan? In Iran, which is largely
the modern day Persia, Beriyan, the dish still exists, but it is a sandwich.
Scholars have often referred to the Biriyani first being a rice sandwich,
something that hasn’t really caught on with chefs, but for me that seems the most plausible
explanation, since it clearly explains the layering of rice. Maybe the biriyani
was an exotic sandwich to begin with! And a sandwich needs heat on both sides, so maybe that is why the 'dhum' came to being!
The Nawabs of Awadh
probably created the richest version with extensive use of saffron and the
choicest cuts of lamb. When Wajid Ali Khan, one of the Awadh rulers was exiled,
he moved to Calcutta, and depending on which version you read (and agree to), he either didn’t
have the money to have so much lamb or because potato was then an imported
vegetable and therefore had a high snob value, he substituted some of the lamb
for potato and thus was born the Kolkatta biriyani with its
ubiquitous potato. The Nizams of Hyderabad were no different and hence these
three major versions of biriyani have more similarities than differences. The Nizams of Hyderabad, though perfected a
variation of cooking the biriyani, called the “Kacchi” style, where the raw
lamb and rice along with the rest of the ingredients are cooked together.
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The Tamil Muslim
biriyani, though is an entirely different story altogether. Without too much of
Mughal influence, the tastes buds had probably already developed and with
existing popularity of tomatoes, the biriyani was already evolved. The Mughals
though were not completely cut off from the Southern most part of India.
Zulfiqar Khan was appointed by Aurangzeb as the first Nawab of Arcot,
which was the capital of the Arcot state, which is probably where the saffron
use in South Indian Biriyani comes from, but is still the most different among
the various biriyanis of the Nawabs from the rest of the country with the
significant use of tomatoes. But the Tamil Muslim biriyani still holds on to
its roots with the use of tomatoes. Was the Tamil Muslim biriyani influenced
by the Arcot biriyani or is it an evolved form of the Arcot biriyani?
The Dindugal Biriyani
with the use of short grained rice and a little more pepper gives it a fiery
flavour. The Thalassery biriyani in its purest form is where the rice and gravy
are cooked separately and mixed only at the time of serving. In some places,
bits of rice is mixed in the gravy for some flavour, but I believe that is more
of an exception than the rule. The biriyani also has more nuts and dry fruits
than in most other types of biriyani. The Donne Biriyani from Karnataka is
another biriyani with little traces or trails to the Mughal biriyanis.
But with such a long
British rule, did they add anything to the Biriyani? Appears not. For a country
whose greatest culinary creation seems to be fried fish and chips, the biriyani
doesn’t appear to have undergone any change and has largely stayed out of the
British culinary influence. More so, England’s national dish is the Chicken
Tikka Masala, so clearly, Indian subcontinent has contributed more to the
British palate than the other way around. The British probably stayed out
of influencing the Biriyani or did they reduce the spice levels to what it is
today? We'll probably never find out.
So does the biriyani
have to be cooked a certain way for it to be called biriyani? Chefs think so,
though I have no idea why. We have evolved so much that if we are able to find
efficient ways to replicate the flavour, then why not? Then of course, I’m not
a fan of adding biriyani masala or taste maker, though that is my personal
opinion. Then OPOS a form of cooking with one pot, called One Pot, One Shot
which is essentially what a biriyani is, was apparently finally cracked by Ramakrishnan and team who found a way to make the biriyani in a pressure
cooker in one shot. Again, chefs have come out with their swords; while those who’ve tasted
it have said that they can’t tell the difference and others refusing to accept
it as an innovative cooking method, leave alone accepting biriyani cooked by
the method. If you can cook the same thing in a microwave, then why not? Can
you extend the same argument to Biriyani masala? I'm sure Anisa Arif's customers have a view that is equivalent to calling her a saviour. She makes different Biriyani masalas that makes home cooking of biriyani a breeze. To each his own, I guess.
It has happened
before and it will happen again. What? “I found that biriyani has been lost and
I wanted to bring it back to full glory and so I started this biriyani
restaurant.” Since there is no single authentic recipe from the past, there is no perfect
biriyani recipe, what most of them are referring to is what they’ve had as
biriyani either as their first experience or as a regular childhood ritual or
the one biriyani that they’ve been wowed with. The Hotel California analogy!
Then there is a
slightly bigger problem? What meat for biriyani? While most biriyani lovers do
not consider vegetarian versions as anything more than joke, purists believe
that only mutton/lamb is biriyani. Even chicken biriyani is a joke for them.
Going back to the origins of the biriyani where beriyan is a
sandwich, maybe the original biriyani was a mutton sandwich!
Well, who would have
thought the Biriyani has such a troubled past? For most of us, Happiness is
biriyani. But the next time you try biriyani from a different region, you
should probably try to understand the difference before dismissing it as tomato
rice. Of course, that doesn’t mean that there are not too many terrible
versions of biriyani that are made by short changing the recipe for cost cutting
that deserve the ultimate insult! They certainly do.
*Pic credit By Gabagool - Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8350442
*Pic credit By Gabagool - Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8350442
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