Anyone for Genhu ki Biryani?

Since the days of kings,cooking has got a technological boost. Mixies have replaced the sil-batta,the pressure cooker has fast-forwarded a process that could take the chulha a few hours,spices come in handy packets and the internet offers innumerable tips for the kitchen. Yet,the most magical dishes are on their way to extinction.

Chitrita Banerjee,author of popular cookbooks like Bengali Cooking: Seasons and Festivals and Hour of the Goddess: Memories of Women,Food and Ritual in Bengal,says,How many people today will go to the trouble of making a vegetarian concoction with a sprouting bamboo,given the time required? The bamboo sprout has to be covered with a clay pot and weighed down with bricks and left undisturbed for a fortnight or so. Then it is cut out of the ground along with the pot,which is broken into pieces. Having been constricted by the pot,the sprout grows into a cauliflower shaped white mass,which is then peeled,boiled,seasoned and cooked into a rich dalna flavoured with many spices.

Both Banerjee and executive chef Ramasamy Selvaraju of Vivanta by Taj blame urbanisation of food for the dilution in taste of their childhood favourites. The erachi barthade,for instance,is a mutton fry that Selvarajus family in Coorg made the way it should be,with lots of natural spices. My grandmother would get fresh cardamom from the garden to dry. The turmeric was dug out minutes before it was ground on the stone. It wasnt a smooth paste,but the flavour and fragrance was so strong that your hand would smell for hours. The coriander was plucked just before it was used. Every mouthful just blew you away, he says. Erachi barthade is mostly made with packaged spices now,and Selvaraju says,They might as well rename it. If it doesnt taste the same,it isnt the same.

The mutton sukka varuval ,similarly,was a dry mutton preparation from Tamil Nadu in which the taste of spices would merge with the aroma of wood fire and a teasing hint of the clay pot in which it was cooked. Try getting the same taste with stainless steel on a gas oven, says Selvaraju icily. The flavours of the past are dying.

What survive are the ghosts of the dishes. Husain,a culinary researcher ,sifts through old,brownish pages full of recipes,and shakes her head sadly. C ooking items such as genhu ki biryani requires patience and passion. It was a multi-step process that involved soaking the wheat overnight,pounding it to remove the husk and then soaking it again. The meat would be cooked separately and the wheat would be boiled in a separate pan with salt and oil. The final step was to make layers with the meat,saffron and wheat,rounding it off with milk and ghee. Then,all that remained was to wait for the pulao to cook in a sealed handi.

Similarly,few people today set curd,carefully infused with the juices of beetroot,saffron,almond etc,so that they can serve a rainbow-coloured dahi . The trick was to make partitions in the vessel and place a different juice in each section. In the morning,the partition would be removed,leaving curd in multiple colours, says Husain. 

These dishes belonged to an era when the kitchen was a womans prerogative,and there would be subtle,or often outright,competition between housewives over their culinary prowess. The biryani,served to guests,was made at home,and,during festivals such as Eid,a whole goat would be stuffed with rice,eggs,dry fruits and keema before being roasted over the fire for guests. In Bengal,women would make the kasundi (a mustard-based pickle) from mustard paste and mustard oil. Banerjee says that women believed that the kasundi would spoil if they did not cleanse themselves thoroughly before making it. She would bathe,wear fresh clothes and pray to the sun god whose light and warmth would prevent the kasundi from spoiling.

Resurrecting old dishes such as moti pulao is quite out of question. The oesophagus of a chicken would be filled with egg white and varq. It would then be tied at intervals and boiled. When the boiled oesophagus was untied,the egg white and varq mix would spill out like little beads. These would then be used to garnish pulao, recalls Husain. Modern cooks use paneer beads,an easy remedy to an exotic process. Where does one get desi chicken nowadays? Whats available in the markets is spring chicken whose oesophagus is too small to stuff with fillings, says Husain.

And where does one go for kala bhaat? On the streets of Andhra Pradesh,even 20 years ago,one could catch a distinctive smell wafting from the houses. Somewhere nearby,kala bhaat would be boiling in the vessel,emanating a heady aroma that old-timers remember fondly. Food writer and author of Biryani,Pratibha Karan,says,My husband remembers eating it in his younger days in Hyderabad. The rice was white but with an aroma so powerful that the neighbours would know what was on the menu, says Karan. Kala bhaat,she explains,was possibly cultivated in a limited area and market economies have rendered it unfeasible at present.

The nimish,too,seems lost to future generations since,the ingredients included unpolluted air,a garden and earthen glasses. A bowl of milk was left out in the garden to capture the dewdrops through the night. In the morning,the milk would be whisked to foam and served in earthen glasses. It is unlikely that the nimish will again be sold on the streets of Delhi and Lucknow,but the same neednt be true for the Kashmiri saag,abuj.

Abuj grows in abundance in the Valley,and,long before the days of terrorism,farmers cultivated it to supply to the markets. A leafy green vegetable that resembles the spinach,abuj has a delectable sour taste that is offset with a little red chilli. Homemakers experimented by adding peas or lotus stems. My grandparents would eat it. Ive never tasted it, says a young Delhi-based Kashmiri girl. Sarla Razdan,who came across abuj growing wild in Lucknow and brought a few saplings back to grow on her terrace garden,says that it is now a winter staple at home. In Kashmir,terrorism took a toll on agriculture and,over the years,people forgot all about the abuj. When people are dying every day,who cares about cuisine? Yet,if somebody takes the initiative to start growing the vegetable,I guarantee that it will be a big hit, says Razdan,whose recent cookbook,Kashmiri Cuisine Through the Ages,has been a success with Valley youngsters who want a slice of the past. Though the book gives details about a wide range of Kashmiri Pandit and wazwan recipes,Razdan has left out the abuj. Whats the point? Its not available anymore, she says. Her own small flowerpot,where new leaves of abuj are emerging from the soil,however,shows that hope still springs.