The arguments have been raging on the Indian sub-continent for decades: Which city can lay claim to having the best biryani in the world? Is it Hyderabadi or Mumbai? Lucknowi or Sindhi? However, in the fog of disputes, the real winner has been forgotten. The best biryani in the world is from (brace for it) ... Bangalore!
Yes, my hometown, the city of gardens and information technology, is also home to arguably the tastiest mutton biryani you are going to find anywhere. Especially the one made at Muslim weddings.
So popular has this version become that it has acquired a name - ‘shaadi ki biryani’ or biryani of weddings - and served in restaurants under this name.
Contracted cooks - or bawarchis as they are known - also make the traditional Bangalore shaadi ki biryani on a much smaller scale for functions at homes such as Eid gatherings or birthday parties. It is prepared in a degh, a Persian-Urdu word that means a large cooking pot, usually made of aluminium or brass.
No self-respecting bawarchi would settle for a rice: mutton ratio of less than 1:1. One kilogram of mutton would go into one kilo of rice, so that guests would have a lot of meat to chomp on.
It was my job as a teenager to buy all the stuff that the bawarchi required, and stand with him all day until he prepared the killer dish for guests during functions at home. Right from buying firewood, the meat, and 5 kilograms of basmati rice.
The degh is placed on burning firewood, into which go oil and all sorts of spices first. Chopped onions follow this and the mixture is cooked until the onion turns golden brown. To this, the cook adds ginger-garlic paste, chilli powder, curd, lemon juice and finally mutton. This mixture is cooked for a while, amid stirring, until the meat is tenderised.
At this stage, a question might be emerging in your heads: How do I know these details? I am amazed too, as I am no cook. (My culinary skills peak with an edible omelette). I think I know these details because I have seen them being enacted before my eyes so often.
It was my job as a teenager to buy all the stuff that the bawarchi required, and stand with him all day until he prepared the killer dish for guests during functions at home. Right from buying firewood, the meat, and 5 kilograms of basmati rice.
One of the interesting aspects of this procedure was, as one bawarchi told me, “…boiling rice until it is exactly 30 per cent cooked in a separate vessel, and transferring it to the big pot where the mutton is being cooked with the spices and onions, for the remaining 70 per cent”.
About an hour before the guests arrived, the biryani would already be ready and the pot would be simmering on embers, to be served steaming hot. As I write this, memories are gushing in - and taste buds are coming alive.
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