Delhi: Cuisine
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Butter chicken
Who invented it?
Sourish Bhattacharyya, July 2, 2023: The Times of India
Butter chicken, or murgh makhani in Hindi, is a dish created by some entrepreneurial Punjabi refugees who moved to Delhi from their native Peshawar to escape the blood-letting triggered by the Partition of India in 1947.
Contrary to the popular notion, it is neither a Mughlai preparation, nor India’s defining chicken dish, despite its global popularity (Domino’s has a butter chicken pizza on offer even in Australia and New Zealand!).
Butter chicken is different from chicken tikka masala, which, according to one popular theory, is an invention of the Sylheti cooks of London’s East End’s ‘Indian’ restaurants, who tossed tandoori chicken morsels into a combination of Campbell soup, a dollop of yogurt, red chilli powder and a cocktail of spices.
This chilli-hot invention, meant to be washed down with chilled beer, originally catered to the ‘lager louts’ returning from soccer matches but was later famously held up as a symbol of British multiculturalism by the then UK foreign secretary Robin Cook in 2001. “Chicken tikka is an Indian dish,” Cook explained. “The masala sauce was added to satisfy the desire of British people to have their meat served in gravy.”
This theory of the provenance of chicken tikka masala was challenged by the Glaswegian restaurateur Asif Ali. Appearing on a 2013 episode of the British TV cookery programme Hairy Bikers, Ali said that his father Ali Ahmed Aslam, a Pakistani-born Scottish national who opened the Shish Mahal restaurant in Glasgow in 1964, invented chicken tikka masala on a cold, dark, wet night in 1971.
How chicken tikka masala became 'Britain's national dish'
He was responding to the request of a bus driver who had dropped in for a meal and found the tandoori chicken to be just too dry. Ali Senior, in the words of his son, “hastily prepared a sauce using various spices soaked in a tin of Campbell’s condensed tomato soup, which he had been eating while recovering from a stomach ulcer”.
Asif Ali got the then MP from Glasgow Central, Chaudhary Mohammed Sarwar, who became the governor of Pakistan’s Punjab province, to back his demand that the Glasgow chicken tikka masala, in the same way as the Arbroath smokie, Cornish clotted cream and Welsh lamb, be granted the European Union’s Protected Denomination of Origin (PDO) status. The campaign failed, which leaves the field clear for Delhi’s Moti Mahal to savour its unofficial status as the birthplace of butter chicken.
Interestingly, the restaurant was reputed in its early decades for its chicken pakora (a Punjabi version of Kentucky Fried Chicken, where chicken chunks are quilted in a spiced chickpea flour batter and deep-fried), mutton burrah (marinated mutton chops roasted and charred in the tandoor) and its much-copied creamy dal prepared with whole black grams (popular among Punjabis as maa ki dal), but fattened with the butter chicken ingredients, minus the chicken, of course!
Even in Shanta Rama Rau’s seminal 1969 book, The Cooking of India , where Moti Mahal makes an entry with a picture of its tandoor and the naans coming out of it, or in Craig Claiborne’s 1970 New York Times article on dining out in Delhi, the restaurant is featured for its tandoori chicken and chicken pakora, and there is not a word about butter chicken.
Clearly, it had not acquired the star status it subsequently did. The dish named butter chicken, interestingly, first appeared on the menu of the Gaylord restaurant at Manhattan, New York City. Moti Mahal was established in 1948 and run by three refugees from Peshawar – Kundan Lal Gujral, a larger-than-life character who doubled as the maitre d’ and, therefore, was the famous face of the restaurant; Kundan Lal Jaggi, who managed the kitchen (the back-end, to use contemporary jargon); and Thakur Dass Mago, the purchase head and store supervisor.
Gujral and Jaggi had both worked in a dhaba, also known as Moti Mahal, run by a man named Mokha Singh Lamba in the Gora Bazar area of Peshawar. Mago’s family owned a wholesale business in rice and pulses that operated out of a shop across the road from the dhaba.
The three young men lost touch with each other until the maelstrom of Partition threw them together in Delhi where they met accidentally, of all places, at a liquor shop where they had gone to buy their respective favourite poisons. Gujral’s and Mago’s wives knew each other because they stitched quilts outside the iconic Delhi Cloth Mills to make ends meet.
Together, the three men set up a tea stall where Jaggi toasted bread and Gujral made the tea. Driven by the urge to set up a bigger business together, they pooled the then princely sum of ₹6,000 (the money they had saved and also raised by pawning the gold jewellery of their wives) and launched Moti Mahal out of a pokey little shop in Daryaganj, primarily to serve refugee families settling down in the area. Soon, they moved over to bigger premises allotted to them by India’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, who had become their biggest patron.
Moti Mahal’s who’s who clientele included a galaxy of greats, from the father of the country’s atomic energy programme, Homi Jehangir Bhabha, and Nehru’s sister and the first woman to be elected President of the UN General Assembly, Vijayalakshmi Pandit, to Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, and prominent Pakistani politicians — late former Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and former foreign minister Gohar Ayub Khan — who had come to the restaurant with the then external affairs minister of India, Sardar Swaran Singh.
Another famous regular was Mohan Singh Oberoi, better known as Rai Bahadur MS Oberoi, who founded the Oberoi Group of hotels. Moti Mahal’s competition, the Tandoor at the nearby Hotel President — the inspiration for the more famous Bukhara restaurant — and the Khyber in the bastion of Delhi’s old elite, Kashmiri Gate, may have served food that won the hearts of the city’s new Punjabi settlers, but the Daryaganj restaurant was without doubt the clear winner in the department of celebrity endorsements.
For a long time, it was believed that Kundan Lal Gujral was the inventor of butter chicken, but Jaggi set the record straight towards the end of his life. …Butter chicken, unlike the old and established narrative, was not invented in Peshawar by Gujral in 1920 (when he was, at best, a young adult), but it was created in the early years of Moti Mahal on a night when, unannounced, a large number of people showed up at the restaurant. The depleted supply of tandoori chicken, according to Jaggi, needed to be pumped up that night to feed the unexpected turnout of guests. The guests loved it and the dish stayed on the menu.
Most likely, butter chicken, or murgh makhani, as it has been called for much of its history, was created by the little-known head cook of Moti Mahal, Munshi Ram, and his assistants, Madan and Hansraj.
Excerpted with permission from The Bloomsbury Handbook of Indian Cuisine (published by Bloomsbury India)
B
Amin Ali & Avijit Ghosh, TNN, February 11, 2024: The Times of India
In the 1930s, when actor-singer Kundal Lal Saigal was breaking box-office records with Devdas, two namesake contemporaries were honing their culinary skills in Peshawar. Those two Kundan Lals – Gujral and Jaggi – went on to create butter chicken, the addictive dish of tandoori chicken stewed in tomato puree that online food guide tasteatlas.com ranked third among the ‘best chicken dishes in the world’ last June. Like Saigal, Gujral and Jaggi are long gone, but their restaurateur descendants are now embroiled in a legal battle. Gujral’s family, which runs Moti Mahal Hotels and Restaurants, moved Delhi High Court last month claiming the title of butter chicken’s inventor for itself and roughly Rs 2 crore in damages from its rivals. The lawsuit is spread over 2,752 pages.
Fix For Dry Chicken
Moti Mahal’s website describes it as India’s famous restaurant since 1920, tracing its origin to Peshawar, and credits founder Kundan Lal Gujral as the creator of tandoori chicken, butter chicken, dal makhani and chicken pakora. It says when Gujral “began worrying about his cooked chickens drying out, he searched for a sauce with which he could rehydrate them. His solution was the ‘makhani’ or ‘butter sauce’ and it led to the creation of ‘butter chicken’, made from bits of tandoori chicken that were in danger of drying out.”
“Tandoori chicken and butter chicken were invented by Kundan Lal Gujral. He created these dishes in Peshawar. Butter chicken is our legacy. No one can take it over,” says Moti Mahal CMD Monish Gujral.
Moti Mahal lists Jawaharlal Nehru, Shah of Iran, Richard Nixon and Zulfiqar Bhutto among its past patrons, and claims former Union education minister Maulana Abul Kalam Azad said, “Visiting Delhi and not eating at Moti Mahal was like visiting Agra and not seeing the Taj Mahal.” One Night In 1947…
Moti Mahal is suing Daryaganj, a restaurant chain started in 2019, whose co-owner Raghav Jaggi is the grandson of Kundan Lal Jaggi. Daryaganj has its own origin story for butter chicken. Late one night in 1947, their website says, some guests arrived at Kundan Lal Jaggi’s restaurant in Old Delhi’s Daryaganj locality. Jaggi had only a few pieces of tandoori chicken remaining. He made a gravy and added the chicken to it, at an unnamed Bengali diner’s suggestion. The dish was a hit, and eventually got named as ‘butter chicken’. Daryaganj has its own versions of how dal makhani, chicken pakora and tandoori chicken were birthed, and also claims Jaggi played host to Nehru, Shah of Iran, Nixon and Bhutto.
The two stories are not as contradictory as they appear. Amit Bagga, co-founder and CEO of Daryaganj, says, “Moti Mahal restaurant in Daryaganj, where butter chicken and dal makhani were invented, was founded by Kundan Lal Jaggi and Kundan Lal Gujral with a third partner who retired.”
Now, which of the Moti Mahal founders – Gujral or Jaggi – invented butter chicken is a question for Justice Sanjeev Narula to decide. On Jan 16, Daryaganj was given a month to file its written response. The next hearing is scheduled on May 29.
It’s Not A Patent Fight
Patent lawyer Saya Choudhary, partner, Singh & Singh Law Firm, says the method of preparing butter chicken and butter chicken itself are already in the public domain. “Therefore, the question of claiming patent rights does not arise. The current dispute is thus related to misrepresentation as to the origin, and not infringement of patent rights.”
While tracing the dish’s origin won’t be easy, food writer Vikram Doctor says its main ingredients could provide clues: “Butter chicken today requires bigbreasted broilers with lots of tender meat. That bird was bred in the US in the 1940s and only started spreading across the world in the late 1950s.”
Pre-1940s, chickens were notoriously tough birds that required long stewing. Doctor says the real secret of tandoori chicken was not so much the tandoor as the yogurt marinade which hydrated and tenderised the tough chickens of the time. But creamy yogurt became widely available in Delhi only after Partition, when refugees from West Punjab arrived with water buffaloes. Since then, butter chicken has lorded over menus donning a multiplicity of avatars. You can buy butter chicken pizza, burger, dosa, samosa, sauce, even sushi. “Butter chicken seems to have become a cuisine in itself,” says Doctor.
A Ticking Umami Bomb
What makes butter chicken a monster success? Chef and restaurateur Garima Arora of Gaa, a Michelinstarred Bangkok restaurant, describes it as an “umami bomb”, a flavour recognised as comforting and delectable. Tomato, dairy, spices…sounds a lot like why people love pizza,” she says. Panchali Mahendra of Atelier Hospitality draws attention to butter chicken’s flamboyant colour. “It’s scientifically proven that red and orange colours make one hungry. I guess the immediate look of butter chicken instigates the brain into a hunger moment,” she says.
But there are as many butter chickens as their makers. “Every restaurant, dhaba and thela is serving butter chicken and no two have the same taste. Bombay’s butter chicken is totally different from Ludhiana’s,” says chef-restaurateur Chiquita Gulati.
California, London, Middle East
Food historian Chitrita Banerji says butter chicken is among the West’s favourite Indian dishes, mainly due to Indian restaurants abroad. Dal makhani is another, says Doctor, probably because both are “easy entry-level dishes to Indian food,” by which he means they are creamy but not too spicy. Restaurateur Rohit Ghai, owner of multiple restaurants in London and the Middle East, estimates nine out of ten tables order butter chicken every day. Kornelija Norbutate, manager of Roti Chai restaurant in central London, and Rahul Sharma, chef at Delhi Junction, a small eatery outside London with a “70% English and 30% Indian” clientele, also say butter chicken is their most popular dish.
“My customers, Indian or American, really love the dish,” says Rahul Bhambri, who owns the restaurants Rooh (New Delhi) and Pippal (California). Sandeep Goyle, Delhi chapter head of National Restaurant Association of India, talks of restaurants in the US, Australia and Thailand serving butter chicken.
And the legal fight seems to have further spurred sales. Food connoisseur Rocky Mohan says, “The case…has turned out to be great advertising for the dish.” Restaurateur Rajan Sethi of Ikk Panjab says, “Our butter chicken orders have grown manifold over the last few days.” (With inputs from Naomi Canton in London)
Chaat
Kulle chaat
Sujith Nair, Kulle chaat is a cool treat on hot summer days, April 15, 2018: The Times of India
From: Sujith Nair, Kulle chaat is a cool treat on hot summer days, April 15, 2018: The Times of India
This Purani Dilli street dish comes in a ‘cup’ made of potato, tomato, or whatever fruit you like
During Delhi’s scorching summers, kulle chaat is a refreshing treat. The spicy mix traditionally comes in a scooped-out potato ‘cup’ (kulle) but vendors are now experimenting with fruits, tomato and cucumber as the base. Made popular by food walks, this new avatar of kulle chaat is lapped up by tourists and shoppers in Chawri Bazaar and Sitaram Bazaar, but Purani Dilli frowns on these upstarts who have tinkered with the original.
“How can you make kulle with tomato?” agonises Ashok Mathur, 48, a fifth-generation Old Delhi resident, who has grown up eating Sultan’s Kulle in his neighbourhood. “Kulle used to be only made of aloo or shakarkandi (sweet potato). The spicier, the better! This was followed by a cup of tea,” Mathur recounts, sitting in his 100-year-old home in Roshanpura.
Arun Kashyap, 32, sits at the same spot where his great grandfather, Sultan Singh, parked himself on a raised platform outside a Jain household, in a narrow bylane that runs parallel to Nai Sadak.
Kashyap says he has grown up hearing tales of the legendary Mukesh — the singer’s family lived in Old Delhi’s Chelpuri — eating kulle made by his great grandfather when he was a roaming hawker with a khomcha (stand).
“Banana was the first fruit our family experimented with for customers who liked fruit chaat but didn’t want the traditional aloo as the base for kulle. Now, we make it with more fruits but the regulars insist on aloo,” says Kashyap, who also serves aloo chaat and tikki.
The aloo is sand-baked at a bhatti in the Old Subzi Mandi area in the morning. By afternoon it reaches Roshanpura, where Kashyap scoops out the middle to make space for the filling. He starts with a few pinches of a homemade masala which, Kashyap says, has 36 ingredients.
This is followed by boiled chana (small chickpeas), kala namak, roasted jeera powder, black pepper, boora (powdered sugar), pomegranate seeds, a squeeze of lemon and finally topped with sliced ginger. This was a vantage point when Sultan set up base here 80 years ago; but changing demography and competition from chaat vendors on the main roads, have made life tough for his great grandson.
But support from the local community has kept Sultan’s kulle going. “We use the space outside a Jain family’s house but they don’t charge us. They let us store our wares inside, and even pay for the kulle they consume,” says Kashyap. His chaat still draws members of the Mathur families, who once occupied most houses in this neighbourhood. Today, the homes have given way to shops and godowns. “Sultan’s masala runs in our blood,” says Ashok Mathur, talking nostalgically about how people used to choke the lane during Ram Navami to relish the kulle served on dhak patta.
So, next time you take Nai Sadak to cross over from the food streets of Chandni Chowk to Jama Masjid, do try out this palate cleanser.
Jain, saatvik food
Jai Tara in Dharampura
Sujith Nair, Old Delhi’s saatvik pit stop, May 13, 2018: The Times of India
From: Sujith Nair, Old Delhi’s saatvik pit stop, May 13, 2018: The Times of India
From: Sujith Nair, Old Delhi’s saatvik pit stop, May 13, 2018: The Times of India
A Dharampura shop’s kachoris and samosas have plenty of takers among the Jain community
It takes a heritage walk through a narrow lane amid imposing havelis — straight out of an old photograph in a fading album showing glimpses of a glorious past — to reach this sweet and namkeen shop in Old Delhi’s Dharampura.
This saatvik haven is one of its kind — pamphlets on the counter, and photographs and posters on walls listing the Jain principles that Jai Tara and its owner stand for.
What draws the morning crowd is their khasta kachori and methi (fenugreek) chutney with an optional topping of chhole. The crisp kachoris are stuffed with ground urad dal and masala. “We don’t use onion, potato, garlic, carrot or any root vegetable in our preparations,” says Satish Jain Bharti, 58, whose family started Jai Tara in the mid-1940s. “Jain families, who generally prefer not to eat out, do come here.”
“We only use filtered water, and our sweets are not topped with silver vark either,” says Bharti, who also runs an NGO. “A visit to a resettlement colony, as a college student, changed my life,” says Bharti, who gave up woollens in the mid-70s and has stuck to his trademark white cotton shirt and dhoti ever since.
Around the same time, Jai Tara too underwent a transformation — from a milk shop famous for its Sonipat ka peda, barfi and hot kulhar doodh, to a sweet and namkeen shop — with the arrival of Vijay Bahadur, a young halwai from Agra.
Bharti’s father engaged Bahadur to make kachoris in the morning, and later introduced matar samosas in the evening. “We used to make carrot halwa, too, but Satishji’s mother felt we should not serve things they themselves didn’t consume,” says Bahadur, now all of 62.
“We use pista and badam as topping for moong dal barfi instead of the traditional silver leaf. Balushahi is prepared during summers, ghewar in rainy season, dry gujiyas during Holi and Diwali festivities and gulab jamun through the year,” says Bahadur.
This quaint shop sells only limited quantities. Regular customers know what is prepared at which time of the day and come accordingly to pick up their favourite sweets and snacks. Balushahi, prepared in the evening, usually runs out before the shop shuts for the day.
Bahadur says that while some old families have moved out of Dharampura, they regularly visit the Jain temples in the neighbourhood. Invariably, they drop in at their shop.
So, if fresh saatvik food is on your mind, it is time to say Jai Tara!
Kanji Vada
The Times of India, September 26, 2015
Dinesh Kumar, who sells kanji vada -from an alcove in a wall, which he shares with a chaiwala -said he would grant me a three-minute interview. He sits opposite a bridal-wear store, which till a few months ago housed the iconic sweetshop, Ghantewala, in Chandni Chowk.
“Kanji vada is a traditional recipe common to Vaishya, Khatri and Kayasthcuisines.It used to be prepared for Holi and during marriages,“ says food historian Pushpesh Pant. “Alas, it has become almost extinct.“
Dinesh says the entire family gets involved in the preparation at their rented house in Mori Gate. A few pots of kanji are made daily and left to ferment. Vadas, red meetha chutney and pudina chutney are prepared fresh. Sundays, when his shop is closed, are spent in making masalas that he sprinkles liberally over his dahibhalla and bhallapapdi.
Dinesh says the spongy moong dal vadas and kanji, which customers find so irresistible that they keep asking for refills, are the result of backbreaking effort -the reason why it's becoming a dying art. Apart from Dinesh, just a few push-cart hawkers sell it in Old Delhi.
Pant says the melt-in-the-mouth vada requires hard labour, involving arduous sessions of beating the batter with hands; the kanji has no other ingredients save mustard powder and salt.Apart from its great taste, kanji is also traditionally regarded as a good digestive.
Nihari
Sujith Nair, Served at dusk, this nihari’s worth the wait, March 4, 2018: The Times of India
From: Sujith Nair, Served at dusk, this nihari’s worth the wait, March 4, 2018: The Times of India
The Mughal-era meat preparation takes an entire day to cook, and many of its makers in Old Delhi come from a single extended family
It’s a meat stew that is cooked overnight and traditionally consumed at the crack of dawn with khameeri roti. But at least one Old Delhi shop has upended the nihari tradition.
“Come after dusk” is what you are told at Kallu’s if you happen to land up at the shop to relish this Mughalera breakfast.
It’s a shop with no signboard in one of the bylanes behind Delite Cinema in Daryaganj. Kallu’s nihari is hard to get unless you make it there within an hour after it’s ready to serve in the evening.
Mohammed Rehan, 28 and one of the youngest nihari makers in Old Delhi, relies on his grandfather’s recipe that was perfected by his father, Rafiquddin, alias Kallu.
Kallu, who passed away two years ago, started this shop in the late 1980s, around the same time when his cousin set up his eatery, Sheedu Nihari, near Turkman Gate. All of them, including Noora in Sadar Bazaar’s Bara Hindu Rao, are related and have learned nihari making at their family-run shop near Kalan Masjid in Turkman Gate area.
Rehan uses 50kg of buffalo meat for his nihari daily, barring Sundays, when the shop is shut. Work begins at 7am. Ghee is the first to hit the woodfired degh, followed by sliced onions and garlic. A few minutes later the meat chunks are dropped in.
Alongside, in another smaller vessel, around 20 maghaz (goat heads) are boiled in water over low charcoal fire.
Half an hour later, the contents of the degh get one good stir and in goes red chilli powder, masala (a blend of 20 spices sourced from Khari Baoli) and salt. This is followed by a shower of dried, caramelised onion powder.
An hour later, atta mixed in water is poured into the degh. As the stew slowly thickens, the stirring gets more vigorous. Workers light up extra wooden logs to keep the degh boiling for the next two hours.
Meanwhile, water is drained off the smaller vessel and each maghaz is checked. Those with cracks are wrapped with threads before being put into the degh along with raw nalli (bone marrow).
The degh is closed with an earthen lid and the mouth sealed with a long wet cloth. Two jute sacks are then wrapped around the degh from both sides and the nihari left to cook in low charcoal fire till the shop opens for the public at 5.30pm.
As expectant customers mill around, the seal is opened and the nalli and the maghaz are removed from the degh and kept aside for those who want to have their nihari with either or both.
By now a small crowd builds up in front of the shop, choking movement in the narrow lane. Rehan, along with his three brothers, fill up plates with nihari, top it with sliced green chillies and ginger and serve it with khameeri rotis.
Some prefer eating it inside the shop, sitting cross-legged on the floor, near the tandoor, while others lap it up standing in the lane.
If you still insist on nihari for breakfast, head to Shabrati Nihari in Jama Masjid’s Chitli Qabar area. But, mind you, they make only a small quantity overnight with around 12kg meat. So, the early bird grabs the nihari!
Shakarkandi
Azadpur’s bhatti
Sujith Nair, This is why your street shakarkandi tastes yum, March 25, 2018: The Times of India
From: Sujith Nair, This is why your street shakarkandi tastes yum, March 25, 2018: The Times of India
An Azadpur bhatti, which supplies chaat shops and vendors across Delhi, is keeping the art of sand baking alive
A chance conversation with a tikki seller in Old Delhi about where he gets his supply of baked aloo led us to this bhatti near Azadpur, Asia’s largest wholesale fruits and vegetables market.
Nestled within a residential block in Kewal Park Extension, it could easily be mistaken for a godown with sacks of shakarkandi (sweet potato) stacked outside. But take a peek inside and you see a huge furnace for heating up Badarpur sand mixed with sawdust. Scoops of this hot sand are transferred into a round aluminium vessel, and in goes a layer of bhutta (sweet corn) or shakarkandi; more sand is poured, an iron mesh placed as a separator, followed by another layer of food and sand, and then it’s left to bake.
A number of chaat vendors, bhutta sellers and caterers rely on bhattis around Azadpur Mandi to sand-bake their products. “Till the early ’90s, there were around 30 bhattis across Delhi, most of them in the Old Sabzi Mandi area. Only a few are left today,” says 52-year-old Dharmpal Prajapati, owner of the bhatti.
“Baking of bhutta, aloo and shakarkandi takes around 45 minutes while singhara (water chestnut) and kachalu are ready in 10-15 minutes,” says Dharmpal.
Bhutta sellers waste no time in packing the hot sweet corn into plastic covers and placing them inside sacks. “If bhutta is wrapped and packed well, it stays warm and fresh for around 12 hours,” says Subhash, a bhutta seller, as he ties a final knot to seal his sack.
Dharmpal says his father Madan Lal and uncle Munshi Lal ran a bhatti near Baraf Khana in the Old Subzi Mandi area. It shut down some years ago. Now, he and his cousin manage this bhatti. “Our clients usually buy their corn or tuber daily from the mandi and bring them here for baking. A few regulars purchase in bulk, leave it with us and get a small portion baked every day based on demand,” he says.
The bhatti also stocks and sells raw shakarkandi, the sweetest of which come from Karnataka’s Belgaum during the winter months. Though sweet corn is available mostly through the year, the desi bhutta season is between mid-June and August, he says.
“Unlike steam cooking where the corn or the tuber gains weight, in sand baking, we get lighter, more condensed food,” says Dharmpal. “We often get curious visitors asking us why the sand doesn’t stick to the tuber, how shakarkandi or aloo is baked without its skin getting burnt.”
Another bhatti in Badola Gaon near Adarsh Nagar Metro Station is equally busy. Dharampal, however, says: “I don’t wish to continue in this line after two years. It will be far easier for me to rent out this space.” The future of traditional sand baking seems bleak unless these bhattis adopt clean technology.
So next time, before you sink your teeth into a bhutta, pause and ask the seller — steamed or sand-baked?
Sheermâl
2019: new varieties
From: Mohammad Ibrar, ‘Jung-e-Sheermal’ plays out in the shadow of Jama Masjid, April 4, 2019: The Times of India
In the lanes of Matia Mahal in the shadow of the Jama Masjid, everyone knows what sheermal is. That pinkish brown flatbread of Arabic provenance recalls feasts of indulgence. Whose salivary gland remains idle at the thought of rich qormas carried on the slightly sweet, chewy sheermal with its faint aroma of sweetened milk and saffron? Yes, that’s what a sheermal is.
But is it? Go to Matia Mahal these days, and men hail you from the eateries, offering tasting plates of their versions of the revered flatbread. And not all of them taste like the traditional sheermal.
The ‘Jung-e-Sheermal’ is well and truly under way in the vicinity of the neighbourhood’s Pakwaan Sweets, the establishment that brought the flatbread out of the exclusive ambience of wedding feasts and elite indulgence and into the streets three decades ago. In recent weeks, many new enterprises from Meerut have been serving innovative varieties of sheermal and the locals have had to respond with their own creations.
Sheermal warriors use flavour as weapon
So you can today have sheermals that are khoya-filled, nut encrusted, coated with grains of sugar, even mango flavoured.
Fazlur Rahman Qureshi, owner of Pakwaan Sweets, sniffs with condescension and pronounces, “What these shops from Meerut sell is not sheermal, but bakery products.” Yet the locality does not seem to put much stock in culinary traditions. As Abu Sufyan, a resident of Turkman Gate, discloses, he does buy the original version “for its authentic Delhi taste” but is happy at the new offerings because “they bring variety to the food scene in the city and give more options to the people”.
The options are anything but traditional. “We have the most flavourful sheermals that the locals are beginning to be infatuated with,” boasts Siraj, who manages the Haji Nadeem Sheermal Centre. He sells three varieties of the bread, and depending on the price, they are either encrusted with pistachio, cashew nut and almond and dipped in ghee or have just a coating of refined oil or dalda. Having served their brand of sheermal stuffed with sweet khoya in Meerut for over two decades, they came to medieval India’s capital in search of a new clientèle. “Price is not a factor for the people here and they have become fans of our fare,” Siraj says.
Haji Imran, of the eponymous Haji Imran Sheermal Shop, a stone’s throw from Siraj’s establishment, is indignant. “They only copy us but can’t make as delectable a sheermal as we do,” he says. Imran’s offerings are similar to Haji Nadeem’s with only a slight variation in the flavour, but he continues, “It was I who first decided to come to the capital from Meerut. I opened a shop in Jaffrabad in north-east Delhi seven months ago and then aware that it is old Delhi that attracts food lovers, I decided to move here. Now, we have a huge following.”
The traditionalist in Qureshi almost splutters at the claims of the new comers. We sell the “original and true variety of the saffron coloured flatbread with a hint of cardamom”, he almost screams. He might turn his nose up at the nouveau sheermalists, but he has ironically had to acknowledge the threat to this business by coming up with his own twists. Pakwaan Sweets now has on its menu masala sheermal, which is redolent of garam masala, the light and fluffy Irani sheermal, also called Toosa, and a sugary iteration designated, almost derogatively, the chini roti.
But of all Qureshi’s creative forays, the best was to wed the sheermal with the mango. “To make this type, we soak the flour in milk and mango juice,” reveals the old sheermal maker of his recent addition. “We then cook the sheermal with juliennes of mango as garnish. The taste is so good that we never seem to have enough to sell.”
The war for sheermal supremacy begins early in the morning with the kneading of the milk-soaked dough. “We continue to knead through the day and well into the night for as long as people come looking for sheermal,” says Haji Imran. By noon, the khoya-filled sheermal is ready to be put in the tandoor after being crushed under a coating of dry fruit. The grilled flatbread is then soaked in ghee or in oil, depending on how expensive the eater’s taste is. “The bread can stay fresh for 12 days,” one of the cooks claims.
After this brief digression, the battle continues. “Ours is the best because we put a lot of pure milk, ghee and other fresh items,” insists Qureshi. “They are light and best eaten with kheer or qorma, unlike the stuff offered by the new ‘mela shops’.” His rivals don’t hear the derisory tone in his voice. Even if they did, they wouldn’t perhaps have time to retort, intent as they are on satiating the cravings of the crowd in their shops.
