Shiraz mutton biryani |
The mutton biryani that you see in the picture above is from Golden Shiraz.
We received it from our friend Shanky AKA Sankarsan Banerjee the evening before Eid was celebrated in Mumbai and had it that night itself. Along with it came chicken chaap from Haan di Biryan and chhanar jilipi from Balaram Mallick.
‘I haven’t been able to call people home for more than a year so decided to send food out to friends and dine virtually,’ said good old Shanky.
Each of the places that I mentioned are in Kolkata and Shanky used a delivery app called Just My roots to order in this food for us in Mumbai from Kolkata. Apparently they ship food from across India. Bringing our favourites dishes to us at a time when we can’t travel.
I was impressed by the fact that the rice remained as fluffy as what one expects from a Shiraz biryani. The mutton was juicy and had nibble-able bits of chorbi (fat). The alu showed endurance power despite the travel. The meat, the rice and the alu were all packed separately in biryani and there was a lot more rice than you can see in the picture.
The chicken in the chaap was very tender and from a small bird which was much appreciated. And a leg piece!!! The base of the chaap was sofi (sophisticated) as we say in Kolkata. I had found strains of this Kolkata Moghlai favourite in the chicken masala that I had at restaurants in Lucknow’s Tulsi gulley AKA non-veg gulley. Haan D Biryani is spoken about a lot on social media these days. We had tried their food when they were new and when our friend Manishita had called us home and ordered it on. We had liked it then.
The chhanar jilipi was nice and plump and Ballaram Mallick is a legend of course.
I know that biryani is associated with the Muslim community and Eid but, as this story shows, it’s quite the secular binder these days.
I’d written about this in the Daily O once.
Link to Just My Roots.