Inimitable Nizami ada

Inimitable Nizami ada

If it’s the earthy goodness of coarse desi grains, meats and spices that entice your palate in a Mewari thali, Chef Sarfaraz Ahmed’s kebab platter tickles the pleasure molecules in your brain with its fine subtlety. His Dahi Ke Kebab crumbles and dissolves in your mouth almost before you can pin down the faint sourness of the yogurt in it that balances the green chilli and cardamom infusing its base of grated paneer, browned onions, fried kaju and finely chopped kishmish. When I recover from my oxytocin-spike, he tells me that for his ground meat Shikampuri Kebab too he uses yogurt tied in muslin cloth and hung to a shrikhand-like consistency, then condensed further by refrigeration.
Ada is the aptly named restaurant in Hyderabad’s Taj Falaknuma Palace where Chef Ahmed has been perfecting his art for the past 15 years. It’s an Urdu word that roughly translates to ‘style’. And cooking style is what differentiates his methods from those of the glib TV show hosts who have people oohing and aahing over sometimes rather frilly dishes.
Many of today’s chefs he feels simply lack the patience and attention to detail that were drilled into him by the old masters of Nizami cuisine in whose kitchens he spent his formative years — masters like Masuddin Tusi who once made the ITC Kakatiya famous for its Hyderabadi biryani.
Tusi is no more but the legacy continues in the biryanis made by his acolytes. Chef Ahmed’s Kachchi Biryani is one such worthy successor, fragrant and delicately flavoured with 12 whole spices in a potli (pouch) which is extracted after the cooking. Tender goat meat is marinated overnight with masala and raw papaya (which tenderises it further). The rice is parboiled with the potli to three different consistencies: a third of it is 40% done, another third is half done, and the last lot is cooked 60%. These are layered with the marinated but uncooked meat in a sealed pot and slow-cooked. The result is a dish that is juicy without any need for gravy, where the meat peels off the bone at a mere prod.
What Chef Ahmed loves to cook above all, however, are kebabs, because he can do it all himself. It’s the individual touch that gives a dish its character, not the recipe. And this is where the new chefs can go wrong. The bhuna chicken, for instance, has to be fried long enough for the flavours to come out.
But enough talk about cooking. Time to slice into Chef Ahmed’s Kubani Ka Kofta — apricots scented with badayan (star anise), stuffed into cottage cheese, baked and served with a tomato gravy. What can I say? It’s a dish with a Nizami ada for sure.