Dishes made at a corner house in Lahore, pre-partition.
Blog: chef@large
By Vikrant Bhasin
WASHINGTON, DC: One of the first dishes I observed being prepared from beginning to end was a biryani, cooked in the style from Lahore. The hand that was ever so gently caramelizing the onion along with garam masala and dry red chili belonged to my maternal grandmother. Her name was Bhagwati, and we called her Beji (pronounced Bay-jee).
She was born near Sargodha and came from a well-to-do family. Her father was a thanedar or a station house officer in the British-Indian police. Being Punjabi, they were heavy-duty foodies. I recall a story she once narrated to me. One summer day as a child, she had a craving for watermelon and asked her father if she could have one. That evening a camel-drawn cart, over loaded with watermelons, arrived at their doorstep. She shared them with the entire village.
As was the custom, Beji married when she was fourteen. And it was then that she turned vegetarian, which was good for her as she came to believe that her diet most certainly contributed to her long and extremely healthy lifespan of 97.
However, being a herbivore did not stop her from creating some of the tastiest meat dishes – biryanibeing her specialty. She did not work from a written recipe. Rather, she put her intuitive mind to arrive at the perfect number of spices or garam masala, consisting of cloves, cardamom, bay leaves, dry red chili peppers, cinnamon bark, and whole black peppercorns that are essential to balance the sweetness of onions. She counted each spice individual, as I do now. One sign of a great Lahori biryani is the supreme after-burn which consummates one’s upper chest and throat but not the tongue or the mouth, followed by beads of perspiration around the temple. At this moment, it’s recommended to reach for kachumbar raita or yogurt, a must-have accompaniment. No honorable Punjabi cook would serve biryani without raita or a large bowl of full-fat yogurt made of water buffalo milk.
Biryani is generally cooked with mutton, which in India is goat, and long-grain sella rice, rather than the expensive and aromatic basmati. I believe the reason for this is both economical and practical. Basmati is expensive and its unique flavor is better suited for pulao, a close cousin of biryani which is prepared with far less overpowering masalas.
Beji cooked in a heavy bottom patila or sauce pan, preferably of brass, over a moderate fire. After adding ghee or oil, she added red chilies and whole-garam masala mentioned above. The count of the masala depended on it size, potency, aroma and freshness. She added anywhere between eight and twelve 3 to 4 inch long red chili peppers to every 1 kilo of onions. But more importantly, the count depended on their potency. After a couple minutes of sauteing, sliced onions and salt joined the mix. An important ratio she used in determining the right amount of onions to meat was three-quarters to 1. Once caramelized, she added meat that had previously been marinated with ginger, garlic and freshly roasted and powdered garam masala. The marination lasted anywhere between four to twenty-four hours. At this stage of the cooking, she would put a lid on her pan, lower the heat, and let the meat stew in its own juices. She boiled rice till it was nearly cooked, sort of al-dente. I recall her adding a few pieces of whole garam masala to the rice as well. The meat was done when it was soft to the fork and falling off the bones. She added yogurt and cooked the meat for a further 10 to 15 minutes. If the yogurt was not as sour as she wanted it to be, she added one to two chopped tomatoes earlier on in the cooking process, after browning the meat. She spooned the rice on top of the meat, put the lid back on, lowered the flame to its minimum, and continued cooking until the rice was done.
Cooking was complete when the rice was soft and fluffy and had incorporated the flavors of the meat. She garnished the rice with saffron simmered in milk. Saffron gave the rice a vibrant orange color and its own unique flavor.
For most of her married life, Beji lived in a corner house in Krishna Nagar in Lahore. Like many others, she had kept a cow for fresh milk and a water-buffalo to prepare cream, butter and yogurt. Beji recalled that her bovine produced 16 seers of milk (around 32 pounds), a topper in her neighborhood. It was in August of ’47 that she parted with that cow, her house and all her material possessions, save a few clothes and personal items, hastily packed in a steel trunk and canvas hold-all, all thanks to Partition and the ignorance of politicians of three different religions.
It is commonly known that the Partition of India created Pakistan. And yes, this is true in part. The “land of the pure” which is Pakistan was created, but it was not India as a whole that was partitioned, but the lands of Punjab and Sindh in the west and Bengal in the east. Partition devastated Sindhi, Punjabi, and Bengali communities (and what is inexcusable is that it is still causing havoc and anguish for Kashmiris).
The Beji that I came to know was not one for material possessions or ill feelings of the past. I came to realize that most people in her generation and community were like that. She had in her own unique way made peace with all that she had had and all that she left behind. She never expected not to return to her home in Krishna Nagar, and she, as most others at the time, thought that when tempers cooled down, wisdom would prevail and life in Lahore with its daily chores would continue once again.
She never did see that corner house again or Lahore for that matter. And she feared that her pet cow had been slaughtered and perhaps eaten as a biryani for some other unfortunate families who had lost as much as she had. A few days prior to my leaving for university in America, she confided in me that the one true thing we humans can never lose is the knowledge and wisdom we gather during the course of our lives – all non-material. In her case it was the memory of all her family recipes amongst many other things. I guess, in her own gentle and grandmotherly way, she was telling me to study hard.
(Vikrant Bhasin is a hands-on chef, part-time culinary instructor and food consultant. Raised in India on a steady Punjabi diet of aloo parauntha and dahi, mutton biryani and raita, gajjar-ka halwa and jalebi, he realized early on that the very “womb of happiness” was located in a full-belly. Since then he has been a lifelong student of the craft of cooking and the art of eating. Coming to America broadened both his culinary skill in international cuisines as well as his waistline. Follow him on Twitter: @bhasinvikrant)