A big and warm hello, from India’s youngest state and the land of Nizams, Dum ka biryani and Haleem. No prizes for guessing that I write this to you from Hyderabad.
The eighth Telangana Formation Day was celebrated across the state on Thursday June 2nd, so it was only apt that in my debut outing here, I should touch upon the cuisine of our country’s newest state while trying not to go bananas over its most famed dish, or rather two, as we witnessed this Ramzan, (read: Haleem season) all over again.
As I sit down to write this, I am awaiting our biryani order from a cloud kitchen called, what else, Love with Biryani, a food startup in Hyderabad, founded during the pandemic by a NRI foodpreneur from Telangana. That Biryani is to Hyderabad, what Maach is to Kolkata or Vada Paav is to Mumbai, is stating the obvious, that of representing an emotion for an entire populace.
Taking this love to the next level, Love with Biryani (LWB) introduced to Hyderabad, during the last festive season, the concept of premium gift packaging of biryani, and not just a couple of biryanis, mind you, but a mind-boggling tally of 60 plus varieties. (Though they have since whittled the list down recently to 50 on their delivery aggregator partners apps). The plan is to go pan-India, with metros Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru being on top of the launch agenda.
At the helm is founder Satya Siva Krishna Rapaka, who runs two hugely successful chains of restaurants called Charminar Indian Cuisine and The Biryaniwalla in Canada. So, while LWB’s mainstay is Hyderabadi Goat Dum Biryani, more popularly known as Hyderabadi Dum Gosht biryani, there are several uncommon variants like the Vijaywada Special Boneless/Guntur/Palnadu Chicken Biryani or the Konaseema Mutton Biryani. In fact, Rapaka is also toying with innovations like Goan-inspired flavours, so care for a Balchao Prawn Biryani or maybe a Cafreal Chicken biryani?
This just goes to show that whatever the genesis of biryani, whether it originated in Iran or elsewhere, there are few foods which are as unifying as this one-pot dish. No wonder biryani was the single most ordered dish in India for the year 2021 as a survey by food delivery aggregator Zomato showed.
Ironically, dum ka biryani, considered the jewel in the crown of Hyderabadi cuisine and a much-celebrated dish of Nizami cuisine which overlaps with Telangana cuisine, is not really patronized by most regions in Telangana, outside Hyderabad.
“Telangana food is robust, rural and rooted-to-the-earth, and without the frills and finesse of cooking techniques and presentation, which characterises Hyderabadi cuisine,” says Ravikanth Reddy, entrepreneur and founder of online foodies club FAT (Food and Travel) Club of Greater Hyderabad. Reddy, who hails from Adilabad district of Telangana, remembers a typical meal at home consisting of rice/Jonna or Jowar Rotis (cooked on a clay tawa on firewood), lentils, (kandi pappu or tuvar dal, pesar pappu or split moong dal) a stir-fried vegetable curry or Koora, like Vankaya Koora (eggplant curry) and a curry using tamarind pulp, referred to as Pulusu, a tangy spicy dish to mop up the dry millet breads or rice with, a popular pulusu being Potalakaya or Snakegourd pulusu.
Telangana cuisine is still quite elusive as far as its presence on restaurant menus in Hyderabad is concerned. Ask Thimma Reddy, executive chef, The Park Hyderabad, who was up for a huge challenge while attempting to curate a Telangana food festival a couple of years before the state of Telangana came into formal existence.
“For the most part, Telangana’s topography comprises hot and semi-arid regions, inhabited by peasants and the predominant food is millets or jowar rotis most often eaten with a simple vegetable dish like potato-eggplant curry. As you go up the social ladder, popular dishes are paya (trotters), stir-fried liver or even liver curries, mutton sherva, a thick mutton curry, inspired by the Hyderabadi mutton shorba. For the festival, our research of the food habits of interior Telangana had thrown up a few popular and exotic dishes like Talakaya Koora or Goat\lamb head curry and Pachi Pulusu made of raw tamarind. Greens like gongura or sorelle leaf and Gangabalaya or purslane leaves are common ingredients in cooking and so are herbs like pudina or mint, this is a distinctive aspect of Telangana food,” says Thimma Reddy, executive chef of the Park Hyderabad, which has a Hyderabadi speciality restaurant called Aish. Today, Aish is one of the earliest and among the handful of restaurants in Hyderabad, to boast of a Telangana tasting menu round the year.
“Except the raw hide, no part of the animal goes wasted, even the blood of the sacrificial goat is stir fried and served as a starter called Nalla,” adds Ravikanth.
Also mention-worthy is a dish often promoted at the annual (and now de rigeur) Telangana food promotions, Pachi Pulusu, which is an example of Pulusu, which requires no cooking, but makes for a lip-smacking side, with rice and Mudda Pappu (a thick dal preparation). Pachi Pulusu is made by crushing tamarind and green chillies and making a divine concoction by adding water, and finally garnishing it with finely chopped onion and green chillies, and a bit of roasted jeera powder. Some use a tadka or seasoning of cumin and mustard seeds, curry leaves and dried red chillies. Pachi Pulusu is often had as a coolant in summer and is now getting to be a staple on Telangana menus.
Clearly, Telangana outside the City of Nizams is not biryani-obsessed. Scandinavian home furnishings major Ikea, however, which opened its first Indian outlet in Hyderabad four years ago, has wisened up to the city’s unique biryani culture. While it started off with its famed meatballs curry (only that they were chicken and not its original beef meatballs) paired with rice, it has since then introduced three biryanis to the menu of its humongous café with about 1000 covers. No matter, that none of the three biryanis, vegetable/chicken tikka or the more eclectic Biryani with Salmon Fillet come anywhere close to the original template of Hyderabadi dum mutton biryani, but if its biryani, who is to complain in Hyderabad?
Swati Sucharita is a Hyderabad-based journalist, food blogger and independent content consultant. You may write in at swati.sucharita@htmedialabs.com.