Mahboob Alam Khan: The Eid spread in our home reflects the diverse food culture of Hyderabad

Instant, instant, instant! This fixation to make and consume everything quickly is the

41 bane of Indian cooking right now,” remarks Nawab Mahboob Alam Khan as he invites us into his Jubilee Hills residence. “Food needs to be cooked slowly. It needs to be respected and savoured. You can’t rush cooking, and you must never rush your meals,” he says. Hailing from a family of Hyderabadi aristocrats, Mahboob is renowned as a culinary expert and a food connoisseur, and is credited with restoring many lost recipes of Hyderabadi cuisine. Although in his mid-70s, his love for cooking and food is still the same as it was six decades ago. For their last iftar before Eid, Mahboob decided to don the chef’s hat himself. As he takes a break from the kitchen, he gets talking with Hyderabad Times about the iftar tradition in his family, his famous haleem, Eid celebrations and Hyderabad’s rich culinary history.

‘Sheer korma and biryani are an absolute must on Eid’

Having just finished preparing an elaborate meal, Mahboob quickly starts planning his next meal, for Eid. “Being the eldest in the family, I will be overseeing the dinner preparations for Eid. There will be many food items, which are yet to be decided, but two things that will be there for sure are biryani and sheer korma,” he says, adding, “No house, poor or rich, goes without sheer korma during Eid. It’s an absolute must in Muslim homes. My wife makes excellent sheer korma, so I will leave it to her. I will focus on the biryani.”

For his much-famed biryani, Mahboob says he still follows a centuries-old recipe that has been passed down generations in their family. “I cook biryani in a copper vessel. It gives a distinct and unique taste compared to when it’s cooked in an aluminium vessel. I still cook biryani on fire. When you cook on fire, the heat hits very slowly — it’s nowhere near the gas temperature. With food, the slower it’s cooked, the better it tastes. Unfortunately, nowadays, people want everything instantly. They have started making biryani in pressure cookers. I don’t understand how you can do that,” he says, aghast.

Ask him the recipe, and Mahboob cleverly dodges the question, quipping, “Unlike the West, where there are standardised measurements for each ingredient, Indian cooking works a lot on what we call ‘andaaza’ (approximation). The entire balance and flavour of the dish depends on the amount of salt you put into it. I prefer to use fewer spices as I believe too much masala ruins the taste. I always use shajeera, which is imported from Afghanistan and eaten only in Hyderabad. You don’t get this kind of shajeera anywhere else in India. Whenever I travel to Delhi, I take this ingredient with me,” he says.

‘Haleem should have a perfect balance of meat and wheat’

Apart from biryani, Mahboob will also be preparing haleem for Eid. Taking us through the painstaking process of preparing haleem, he says, “Haleem is basically wheat with meat. In Hyderabad, we still cook whole grain wheat. In restaurants, you don’t see that happening. Due to unavailability of pounded wheat, they cook with semolina, which is easier to get. But if you see the old Hyderabad haleem, it’s a different story. The way we cook haleem is still in the old style. Haleem-making is a tiring effort. It takes at least 7-8 hours. We have a fixed ratio of wheat and meat, along with pure ghee and other spices.”

Giving us a lowdown, he adds, “First, we hand-pound the wheat. Then we boil the grain — it takes two to three hours for the grain to cook. Then we add meat. The proportion of meat to wheat dictates the final taste and texture of the haleem. We mix the wheat with the meat along with the bones, and it takes another two hours of slow cooking. We get the stock from the bones, and to get the stock out, you have to cook it very, very slowly. Then, after the stock comes out, the meat becomes very, very soft. We start hand pounding with a wooden rod. The pounding takes at least 90 mins. It’s a very labour intensive exercise. Once that is done, we mix ghee, red chillis, green chillis, black pepper, ginger garlic, shajeera and cardamom. With this, the haleem is ready.”

‘Hyderabad’s diverse culture is reflected in its food’

According to Mahboob, the diverse culture and history of Hyderabad is reflected in its food. “The beauty of Hyderabadi cuisine is the fact that it’s an amalgamation of so many different cultures. The old Hyderabad state had a mixture of Marathwada, Karnataka and Telangana cultures. The use of green mango has a lot to do with the Marathwada influence. We eat a lot of millets, which is Karnataka’s influence. We eat a lot of tamarind, which is from Telangana. Back in the 50s, all the ghee used to come from Bidar, rice from Nizamabad and Warangal, millets from Sitapur,” he says, adding, “Apart from these influences, there is the influence of Arab food. Dishes like marag are purely Yemeni contribution to our food culture. The Afghans introduced dishes that consisted of meat and rice, which they called pulav. Then there is the Persian influence. In Irani cuisine, they cook with many fruits, such as prunes, raisins, etc. All these influences crept into the Hyderabadi style of cooking over the years.”

‘Sad to see many dishes vanish from Hyderabad’s culinary landscape’
Mahboob, however, regrets that a few dishes have completely vanished from the city’s culinary landscape. “Back in the 50s, we used to have something called ‘travel food’. A trip to Mumbai was an 18-20 hour journey for us via train. When we used to go to our jagir in Aurangabad, it used to take us four days to get there. So we would carry food that would last us a long time. The way travel food was cooked was very different; no water was added to it. For example, dishes like shikampur and jahazi korma. There are many more, which I now don’t recall. People used to take food from Hyderabad to London, and it used to last,” he says, adding, “Those chefs are gone, that type is food is gone, and the need for such type of food is gone. But I really regret that. Because it was an important aspect of Hyderabad cuisine. We still do have dishes like dum ke baigan. We cook it, and it lasts longer. In fact, a day after cooking it, it tastes even better. But I wish we had done more to preserve this special kind of cuisine in Hyderabad.”




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