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| Dhakkai-Style Kacchi Biryani. Photo by Mir Elias, 2015. |
"Not all those who wander are lost."
Today's post is about migration and one of the dishes from the Indian subcontinent that, for me, most evokes a migrant soul -- the biryani.
I recently read a short essay by Gary Younge writing for The Guardian where he eloquently summarizes the intangible costs of migration, borne even by relatively privileged migrants (i.e., those who leave home by their own choice, usually for educational and/or professional reasons). He says:
"Migrants, almost by definition, move with the future in mind. But their journeys inevitably involve excising part of their past. It’s not workers who emigrate but people. And whenever they move they leave part of themselves behind. Efforts to reclaim that which has been lost result in something more than nostalgia but, if you’re lucky, less than exile. And the losses keep coming. Funerals, christenings, graduations and weddings missed – milestones you couldn’t make because your life is elsewhere." And, inevitably, this makes Mr. Younge grieve "for bits of my life that had been lost. Not discarded; but atrophied. Huge, formative parts of my childhood and youth that I could no longer explain because you would really have had to have been there but without which I didn’t make much sense."
"I didn't make much sense." I like that.
Not all wanderers may be lost but many live with the disconcerting reality that we didn’t quite make a free and unfettered choice to become a wanderer in the first place. Our wanderings were, in a sense, thrust upon us, whether by our own psychosocial makeup or by circumstances, or both. For a migrant like me (I left home when I was 17 to attend college half way across the world), observing my surroundings, writing this blog, appropriating and redefining the recipes I post here, are some of the ways in which, perhaps, I try to control, reshape, define every moment -- a survival skill of sorts for an unmoored person who has to think before answering the question “where is home” or “where would you like to be buried”.
In search of that enigmatic state that is "more than nostalgia but...less than exile", I wanted to research the origins of biryani (a migrant dish if ever there was one, as you'll see below), compare a few recipes to perfect the best home cooking technique (still very much a work in progress), and try out my own favorite kind (but, what else) -- the Dhakkai Kacchi Biryani. In Dhaka, the Kacchi (or Raw, because raw, marinated meat is steamed/baked in parboiled rice) Biryani, when done by rock star chefs such as Fakruddin (and their culinary heirs and proteges), reaches epic heights. This dish singlehandedly helped me get through the annoying social niceties of the many weddings I was dragged to as a sulky, teenager guest.
In "Curry: A Tale of Cooks and Conquerors", Lizzy Collingham tells us about the transformation of the Persian pilau to biryani, found across Bangladesh, Pakistan and India in a variety of styles today. "In the kitchens of the Mughals...mismatched culinary cultures came together to produce a synthesis of the recipes of northern Hindustan, central Asia, and Persia." After a rocky start to this synthesis during Babur's time (Babur did not find Indian food agreeable to his more Central Asian palette and bemoaned the lack of good fruit in India), Mughlai cuisine was refined further with Persian influences brought home (along with Persian cooks) by Humayun (Babar's son) after 15 years of exile in Afghanistan and Persia. "The pièce de résistance of Persian cuisine was [and still is] pilau." In the kitchens of the next Mughal emperor, Akbar (1555-1605) the pilau underwent a transformation. While "Babur strengthened India's cultural links with central Asia and Humayun introduced Persian influences, Akbar ensured that the two were melded together with Hindustani culture to create a Mughlai culture that was a synthesis of all three....[I]n the kitchens [of Akbar]...the delicately flavored Persian pilau met the pungent and spicy rice dishes of Hindustan to create the classic Mughlai dish, biryani." Ms. Collingham includes a recipe for a Mughal-style (chicken) biryani in the book and notes that "Mughal biryanis were extremely spicy, much spicier than biryanis tend to be nowadays." Well, let's just say that there is no holding back the spices in the Dhakkai Kacchi Biryani!
To end on an optimistic note, for we must ever move onwards in life, in biryani, I find a reflection of the migrant's loss (like that of Babur), but also the rich syncretism of the lucky and discerning migrant's legacy (like that of Akbar).
So, to restitch a past that now has to be carefully tended and watered every day with each passing year, I present to you my version of the biryani. Many thanks to Ms. Collingham, the ever wondrous Ms. Siddika Kabir, and a fellow blogger at My Food My Life for the recipe (including techniques, which I'm still perfecting) presented below.
One last parting word of cautious encouragement, if this is your first time making biryani (as it was mine), like any migrant who leaves home by choice, you'll need to approach this recipe with some sense of adventure, given the number of ingredients, the steps, the calibrated timing, the differing cooking times of ingredients, and most importantly, managing the level of salt. If you fail (as I did), pick yourself back up, and try again.
Ever onwards!
Dhakkai-Style Kacchi Biryani
First, please make a list of all the ingredients you will need from the below steps.
DAY 1 (EVENING)
- 2 lbs. high quality goat or lamb meat, marinate for 30 minutes in salt water, then rinse and pat dry thoroughly (this step allegedly softens the meat). You can also use chicken (in which case, skip this salting step and the tenderizer step below). Cut into medium size pieces.
- 1 large onion, cut in thin slices, fried in just enough ghee, oil or ghee/oil mixture until caramelized. Cool and set aside. [You can skip the fried onions if you want to simplify the recipe, but the meat will not have the mahogany color that one associates with biryani.]
Marinade for Meat
Wet
- 1 cup yogurt
- 1 inch fresh ginger peeled and made into a paste
- 5 cloves fresh garlic peeled and made into a paste
- 4-5 fresh green (Thai bird) chilies chopped fine (you can seed the chilies first to reduce the heat, or use dried red chilies for a different kind of heat)
- Juice of half a lemon (less if the yogurt you're using is very sour)
Dry
- 1 stick cinnamon powder
- 1 Tbsp allspice
- 2 whole black cardamoms
- 1 Tbsp whole cumin (or caraway seeds)
- 1 Tbsp whole coriander
- 1 Tbsp white pepper (optional)
- 3 whole cloves
- 1 tsp nutmeg powder
- 1 tsp mace powder
- Meat tenderizer (3-4 Tbsp raw papaya, or store bought powdered meat tenderizer used according to instructions) [note: You can skip this step if you can create enough heat to cook the dish in an oven for 2-3 hours at 400F/180C, see below.]
- A little salt to taste (unless the store bought meat tenderizer already has salt)
Lightly roast the dry ingredients, then grind to a fine powder (I use an old coffee grinder repurposed into a spice grinder) and mix well with the wet ingredients, the caramelized onions (if using) and meat along with the meat tenderizer. Prick the meat all over to ensure that the tenderizer penetrates. Cover and refrigerate overnight to marinate.
DAY 2 (2 hours before serving)
Preparing the Meat
Take the marinated meat out of the fridge so that it comes up to room temperature. Let stand for a couple of hours while you work on the remaining steps below.
Preparing the Potatoes
[You can skip the potatoes if you want to simplify the recipe.] Peel 4-5 potatoes and parboil for 10-12 minutes or so (depending on size) in salted water. Drain, cool, cut in halves or quarters (depending on size again) and fry in 2 Tbsp. ghee. Set aside. [You can simply fry without parboiling if you plan to cook the biryani in the oven.]
Preparing the Rice (including ingredients)
- 1.5 cups rice rinsed in cold water a few times until the water runs clear (I used Pakistani basmati rice aged for a year). The rice to meat ratio should be approx. 1:2.
- 3 whole cloves
- 1 cinnamon stick
- 3 bay leafs
- 7 whole green cardamom pods
- Approx. 6 cups water
- Salt to taste (about 2 Tbsp.)
Preparing the biryani
1. In a heavy-bottomed cast iron pot or Dutch oven, put enough melted ghee (be generous) to coat the bottom of the pot. Turn the flame on medium high.
2. Arrange the meat (take out the raw papaya pieces, if using, as best you can, but use the rest of the marinade) and fry for a couple of minutes so that the meat reaches the same temperature as the rice. Then place the potatoes (if using) and alubukharas in between the meat. Sprinkle with half of the kewra water.
3. Arrange the rice in a layer over the meat/potato (if using)/alubukhara layer working quickly while the rice is still warm.
4. Sprinkle the remaining kewra water over the last layer of rice.
5. Pour the saffron infused milk all over the rice.
6. Pour in 1 to 1.5 cups of the rice water and remaining ghee taking care to ensure that the liquid remains below the surface of the rice.
7. Seal the lid as tightly as you can with aluminum foil. For an environmentally friendly and the more traditional option, you can seal the lid with dough. Here is a demonstration of the technique (with pictures).
8. After about 5 minutes, as soon as you hear sizzling sounds coming from the pot, turn the flame down to the lowest setting and walk away for the rest of the hour. [Alternatively, cook in a 400F/180C oven for 1-3 hours, depending on your oven, a technique recommended by a Dhakai food expert, Mr. Mahfoozur Rahman. It took only an hour in mine, especially with the marinated, tenderized meat. Without tenderized meat, I expect it would take at least 2 hours, but the likelihood of scorching the bottom of the pan will also increase.]
9. Hop from one foot to the other in anxious anticipation. Or, better yet, prepare your side dishes (see step 11 below) and clean the kitchen, for (unlike Akbar and his retinue) we are queens, kings, cooks and servants, all in one, in our kitchens. Don't believe me, try scouring a scorched pan as I had to do the first time I tried this recipe.
10. Open the pot carefully after 1 hour. The kitchen should have lovely smells by now and your neighbors and cats will invite themselves over. If the rice or meat needs a little more time, let it cook for 20-30 minutes more (this is where the thickness of the bottom of your pot, and liberal use of ghee, becomes key to avoid scorching).
11. Serve with a side of a simple chopped salad of tomatoes and cucumbers and either raita or borhani (a salted spiced yogurt drunk in Bangladesh).
12. Yumly!
