India's social media network on food and drink: Biryanis and Pulaos - India's social media network on food and drink

Unlike what many believe, biriyani was not a foreign import to India. The king Nala, whose story Nalopakhyana forms a digression in the Mahabharata, was famed for his artifice with such palanna, meat+ rice dishes cooked together. At that time, there was a cultural continuity between the eastern parts of India and Iran, which is when the aromatic rices, eggplant, cucumbers, and the concept of rice ad meat cooked together moved from east to west. The Indian courts were places of some sophistication then, where our close cousins the Iranians, the Kambojas [eastern Iranians], Scythians, Parthians, and even Greek mercenaries freely mixed together and exchanged ideas, language and blood.

So polau [ palanna], along with khecaranna [ khichri], has roots in India, not Iran. The biriyani on which we are focusing today is rice & meat steamed together, NOT FRIED, i.e. no biriyan, involved. Therefore, we are cooking dishes similar in method, ingredients & spices to those described in the MAHABHARATA: the special ones patronized ONLY by the kingly classes. When exiled, King Nala utterly desperate and finding no other avenue of survival, hires himself out as a CHEF to the local satrap, and soon gains renown preparing the exquisite rice & meat dishes that had been his hobby in happier times.

In Central Asia, both those dishes, mash-khitchari, and pilaf, attest to their joint, common Indian origins interestingly enough by retaining the original legume for the khichari, mash=urad , that no longer was available in the temperate regions.

The Persian term BIRIYAN does not indicate a place of origin, merely using a Persian word to indicate a local food. For example, Bengali Muslims, to differentiate their langugefromthe common Bengal tongue, will insist on designating water “paani” instead of “jol” and meat “gosth” instead of “mangsho”. This serves, in their mind, to establish a closer propinquity to Northern India & Urdu and therefore a link to Islam that is purer, more intimate than one sullied by mere Bengali and its supposed association with Sanskrit . It is not understood that “paani” and “jol” are both tadbhava words!! Biriyani likewise has suffered a similar praxis.