In search of the real Hyderabadi biryani

Posted By: Vir Sanghvi   |   Posted On: 21 Feb 2009 12:49 PM   |   Views: 961 

Charminar, Hyderabad

I am off to Hyderabad, home of grand cuisine, alternative center of north Indian food to Lucknow, birthplace of famous biryani and a city celebrated in gastronomic legend.

 

   Truth be told, I know very little about Hyderabad. I was here in the 70s, a trip I remember because it coincided with the death of Elvis Presley. And then I was back here at the end of 1980s. If you want to recognize how brilliantly perspicacious I am as a political commentator, then you can use this story. I was in Hyderabad to meet N.T. Rama Rao. The day after I arrived, I was told that the great man was too busy to see me. However, I could meet his son-in-law.

 

   Naturally I refused. I had come to meet the organ grinder. I was not going to be satisfied with the monkey, some son-in-law who would clearly amount to nothing.

 

   Some man called Chandrababu Naidu…

 

   This time I am back in Hyderabad without a political or rock and roll agenda. I am accompanied by my Discovery Travel and Living crew and we are shooting for our episode on biryani.

 

   We all know the legends by now. Though the Mughal court based in Delhi invented most of the great dishes of modern north Indian cuisine, these were preserved by the satraps after the decline of the Mughal Empire following Aurangzeb.

 

   Thus, Lucknow is a better example of Mughal court cuisine than Delhi. And the same is true of Hyderabad, where the Nizam-ul-Mulk, the Mughal Governor of the Deccan, finally declared himself independent and came eventually to be known as His Exalted Highness, The Nizam of Hyderabad.

 

   Part of the research for our biryani episode has led us to Hyderabad. We all know that the katchi biryani of Hyderabad is justly famous. Many people argue that it is the only true biryani. The biryanis of Lucknow, they say, are no more than pulaos: combinations of cooked rice and cooked meat. The Hyderabadi biryani, on the other hand, uses raw rice and raw meat cooked together. Thus, it is a complete dish, unlike the Awadhi pretender.

 

   Soon after I get to Hyderabad, I am delighted to find that nearly every dhaba and restaurant has a sign outside reading: "Biryani served here". Or some variation thereof.

 

   Ah, I say to myself, I am finally going to get the biryani that Hyderabad is famous for.

 

   On the first evening, I ask for a biryani at Kebabs and Kurries, the Indian restaurant at the ITC Kakatiya, where I am staying. Sure, says the chef, he will be happy to serve me a Dum Pukht biryani.

 

   I point out to him that a Dum Pukht biryani, no matter how delicious and inventive, is an ITC creation, a marriage of the Lucknow and Hyderabadi traditions. Could he please do a genuine Hyderabadi biryani for me?

 

   Sorry sir, he says. All we do is Dum Pukht biryani.

 

   The biryani, when it arrives, is fine as are the local dishes: patthar ka ghosht and tala hua mutton.

 

   But I could have had the same biryani at the Maurya.

 

   The next day we begin our biryani search in earnest. We go first to a local Hyderabadi restaurant so famous that I will not embarrass it by revealing its name.

 

   I tell the manager that we are here to eat genuine Hyderabadi food. What can he serve us?

 

   The manager looks dubiously at us and I have the terrible sense that he is not really from the hotel trade at all and that this is just a job he is doing while his visa for Saudi Arabia comes through.

 

   Would you like something spicy, he asks. I respond that I don't really care what the level of spicing is as long as it is something so authentic that I can only get it in Hyderabad.

 

   What about burbura chicken, he asks.

 

   I am sorry. What exactly is that?

 

   You will love it, he says.

 

   Twenty minutes later, the biryani arrives. It is rubbish, the sort of ready-made biryani you get at any takeaway place in Bombay or Delhi. Disappointed, I send for the manager again. What about the genuine Hyderabadi dish I was promised?

 

   It's on its way, he smiles.

 

   And indeed it is. When it does arrive, I recognize it immediately. It is chicken Manchurian with a garnish of garam masala and coriander.

 

   I call the manager again. Is this really Hyderabadi?

 

      It is one of our most popular dishes, here in Hyderabad, he says indignantly.

 

    I give up and try Azizia, another biryani place that has come heavily recommended.

 

   My heart sinks when I notice that the restaurant has a full Chinese menu. But at least it does not bother to disguise chicken Manchurian with a false name, I say to myself. My Gujarati sensibilities are damaged, however, when they ask me if I would like a half-tongue.

 

   And what is that, I ask.

 

   It's half of the tongue of the goat, they say. If you would like the whole tongue, it's only a little bit more expensive. It goes wonderfully well with our trotter gravy.

 

"A genuine biryani is made on a open fire according to an old family recipe. It is brilliant, full of subtle flavours and cooked according to the old katcha biryani recipe."

   Thank you, I say, can I just have the biryani?

 

   Within minutes, they have placed a huge bowl of mutton biryani in front of me. It's not particularly hot but by God, it is tasty! Even the mutton is so tender that it falls apart as you pick at it. A portion that could feed three people costs less than a 100 Rs.

 

   I take my crew, invade the kitchen and find the cooks. Thrilled at the prospect of being on TV, they happily show me how they make it. I am massively relieved. This is a genuine Hyderabadi biryani made with raw meat and raw rice. What's more, because they can never re-heat it, they keep making new batches of biryani every two hours or so.

 

   A final stop is an all-day and all-night dhaba near a mosque. They don't waste time on goat. Everything is made with beef. I approve entirely and ask to try all the beef dishes.

 

   The tala hua mutton made with beef (never mind the name) is not much better than the goat version that I've had all over Hyderabad. And a beef seekh kebab is nicely fatty without being significantly better than the goat version.

 

   The biryani, when it does arrive, is rather like a pulao, bland and tasting of nothing. The owner notices the TV cameras and comes over. Would I like more beef?

 

   I say that it would be nice to have any beef at all.

 

   He smiles and a short while later returns with several boneless pieces of beef that have clearly been recently cooked.

 

   I smile and try and look polite.

 

   What do I think of the biryani, he asks.

 

   Well, I say, politeness be damned, it's a little bland.

 

   Ah, he responds, that's because they gave you the biryani from the top. I will get you the real biryani from the bottom.

 

   Minutes later he is back with a spicy biryani that bears no resemblance to the one I was served.

 

   You see, he says, we get all kinds of people here and we give most of them the rice from the top of the pot. The ones we like, however, get the biryani from the bottom which has all the masala.

 

   I protest weakly that this seems rather unfair.

 

   He nods in agreement and seems vastly amused.

 

   I try his final biryani. It's okay but frankly I doubt if it uses raw meat. Certainly, it is not a patch on the Azizia biryani.

 

   The following day, I am invited to lunch with an old Hyderabadi family. A genuine biryani is made on a open fire according to an old family recipe. It is brilliant, full of subtle flavours and cooked according to the old katcha biryani recipe.

 

  I ask my hosts why this biryani bears no resemblance to anything I have eaten on the streets of Hyderabad.

 

   They smile apologetically. The restaurant biryani, they explain, is a poor man's food made by cooks who know how to cut corners. Their biryani, on the other hand, is a celebration food, full of expensive ingredients, and cooked for hours.

 

   So, there goes another myth. I had gone to Hyderabad imagining that anybody could eat great biryani on the street.

 

   But the truth is that the local biryani is not very different from the stuff you get in the streets of Bombay or Delhi. To eat the real thing, you have to have rich friends with a noble lineage.

 

   What a shame! And here I was, looking for a democratic dish!

 

Garlic is one of the world’s greatest flavours

Garlic is one of the world’s greatest flavours

Posted By: Vir Sanghvi   |   Posted On: 18 Jan 2009 12:02 PM   |   Views: 94 

As you probably know, there is a scale that measures the hotness of chillies. And many fans of the chilli pride themselves on the extent to which they can eat hot chillies without collapsing. My friend, the late Sabina Saigal Saikia, for instance, could consume the hottest of chillies and still smile while the rest of us would be looking for water, Coke, ice-cream, anything! to put out the fires in our mouths.

 

   But is there a similar scale for garlic? I ask because I’m pretty sure that if such a measure existed, I would be to garlic what Sabina was to chillies.

 

   Some people complain about too much garlic. I always wonder what they mean. As far as I am concerned, there is no such thing as too much garlic. I have never ever encountered a dish that has been spoilt by the addition of more garlic and while I concede that garlic has such a powerful taste that it can mask most other flavours, I have to say that, on balance, I would take garlic over all the other flavours.

 

   In Europe, they associate garlic with the French, who the English always describe as reeking of garlic. But any Indian who saw how much garlic the French actually used would be astonished by their moderation. The French idea of flavouring with garlic is to rub a clove around a salad bowl before making the salad. Most Indians wouldn’t even taste a garlic flavour that was so subtle.

 

  In my view, the French get too much credit. The only people who really understand garlic and know how to use it are Indians.

 

   Consider our cooking. It’s hard to conceive of even the most basic Indian dish without the flavour of onions and garlic. When we make chutneys, we look for garlic: the classic chutney of Gujarati cooking, for instance, is lasan ni chutni, which is nothing more than a concentrated dose of garlic. Indians think nothing of eating garlic pickle and chomping on the whole cloves. When we go to so-called Chinese restaurants we like ordering Prawns in Garlic Sauce or any other dish which is redolent with the flavour of garlic.

 

   Small wonder then that India is the world’s second largest producer of garlic after China and while the Chinese export a fair amount of their crop (to India, among other places), we like to consume most of our garlic ourselves.

 

   But we don’t make a fetish of garlic. It always intrigues me how people in the west treat a love of garlic as a dangerous perversion on par with sado-masochism or bondage. There’s a restaurant in London’s Soho called Garlic And Shots which is frequented by strangely dressed people in chains and leather trousers. The food itself is rubbish but the restaurant gets by because it goes on and on about how it puts garlic in everything. There are garlic cocktails, garlic fish, garlic meat, garlic sauce etc. I doubt very much if anyone actually likes the food but the idea of eating so much garlic seems to give white people a decidedly sexual thrill.

 

   Actually, that’s not so odd. Even within the Indian tradition, garlic is associated with the creation of heat and passion in the body which I suppose is an old-fashioned way of saying that it is a bit of an aphrodisiac. Conservative Hindus will not eat garlic and all good Jains are forbidden to eat it. (As you may have guessed, I’m a very bad Jain.)

 

   Having lived on garlic for much of my life, I can state with authority that reports of its effects on potency and desire are vastly overrated. All it does is make you smell of garlic for several hours afterwards. Some people like the smell (I certainly do) but others don’t. Nevertheless there is no way of avoiding the garlic odour, no matter what you try. Garlic is excreted by the body through the breath and the skin so even a strong mouthwash will make only a marginal difference.

 

"Think creatively with garlic. It won’t necessarily make you sexier or healthier. But you’ll certainly eat better."

   Some foods go better with garlic than others. I find that most salad vegetables and barely cooked fish improve with the addition of garlic. The French have known this for a long time and one of their more inspired inventions is aioli, a garlic mayonnaise. You use it as a dip for crudités but it goes particularly well with a simple dish of boiled prawns. You dunk the prawns in the aioli till their cool, firm flesh is soaked with the flavour of garlic and then pop them into your mouth.

 

   Cooked vegetables also improve with garlic. Sauté mushrooms with onion and the flavour will be nice. But add garlic and suddenly, the dish will come alive. I don’t know why more people don’t use garlic with potatoes: the flavours are made for each other. Similarly, asparagus improves with a garlic flavoured olive oil.

 

   Italians use garlic almost as much as the French do. One of the classic pasta dishes of Italian cooking is spaghetti alio olio, which is spaghetti simply cooked with olive oil and chopped garlic. In India, we like to add a little chilli as well (in which case the dish becomes spaghetti alio olio peperoncino) but most Indian tastebuds are so immune to the flavour of garlic that we need to add much more garlic than Italians would regard as necessary. My friend the Princess has the rare distinction of having sent back the spaghetti alio olio at nearly every Italian restaurant she has ever eaten at on the grounds that there isn’t enough garlic. Now, when I order the dish for her, I tell the chef “Put the most excessive quantity of garlic that you can think of. And then, when you have done that once, do it all over again.”

 

   Oriental cuisine always seems to me to rely less on garlic than our own food. The Chinese use garlic but do not accord it the almost mythic status that we do. The Thais use such a complex mixture of fresh herbs in their cooking that they are reluctant to let a single flavour such as garlic overwhelm the dish. Even so, one of the best dishes you can get on the streets of Bangkok consists of small prawns, freshly shelled and fried very quickly with lots of garlic. Like the French, the Thais know that garlic and prawns are old friends and make the most of the combination.

 

   You will often hear about the medicinal properties of garlic. In one version of the Ramayana, Kaikeyi got around Dashrath by giving him a garlic-based medicine that killed the parasites in his stomach. And in most schools of ancient medicine, garlic crops up in some form or the other.

 

   Even modern medicine has been known to recognise that garlic can be useful in the prevention of heart disease. Recent research on the subject however is somewhat contradictory so I would be wary of popping those garlic capsules on the grounds of good health.

 

   But garlic is so strong that cultural traditions usually imbue it with mythical powers. For instance, it is said that vampires are put off by the smell of garlic, a useful tip to remember should you ever find yourself having dinner with Count Dracula.

 

   My view however is that if you eat garlic because of medicine or myth, you are doing yourself a grave injustice. Eat it for the taste alone. It is one of the world’s great flavours – better even than say, white truffle – and it is widely available at the cheapest possible cost.

 

   Sadly, because it is so common, we tend to take it for granted. So, the next time you step into the kitchen, look closely at that clove of garlic. Should you just be chopping it up or pulverising it as part of some masala? Isn’t that a waste of such a great taste?

 

   Think creatively with garlic. It won’t necessarily make you sexier or healthier. But you’ll certainly eat better.