Roshni Bajaj Sanghvi finds that a new book of Bohra recipes is a tasty nibble of the community’s food.
In the Dawoodi Bohra community, the surest sign that dinner is imminent is when family members start passing the salt. They pass a little pot to each other around the thaal, or community platter, and each person dips their finger into it to taste a few grains. This ritual is supposed to stimulate the digestive juices, cleanse the body and signify togetherness. This is followed by dessert, probably ice cream. A savoury dish follows and then sweet and savoury alternate until the biryani and bread are served. The meal ends with fruit.
The traditional Bohra thaal came from the belief that a family that dines together stays together. A large plate, enough to serve eight to ten people, is filled with each course and each diner eats from the part closest to him or her.
Inquilab Offset Printers, who publish the leading Urdu daily Inquilab, recently published a set of books of recipes from four different Muslim communities: Bohra, Memon, Konkani and Kashmiri. The Bohra book has a picture of hands reaching into a thaal as the cover image and a judicious mix of sweet and savoury recipes. Since most Bohras are Gujarati, their food is a mixture of Mughlai and Gujarati. So there are recipes for khichda and kadai ghosht as well as gud papdi and gakhar.
The books are an initiative to help 43 per cent of Inquilab’s readers. “We have been carrying women’s home recipes for six years,” said the editor Shahid Latif. “The women told us that they can’t keep cutting out recipes, and that we should do a book . So instead of a general book, we asked women with a profound knowledge of their community’s food to contribute recipes, and we came out with community-specific books.”
While there are many traditional dishes, such as lagan ni seekh and kalamro, Bohri food has a lot of very enterprising non-traditional food as well. Some of it is almost colonial, such as white chicken on cheese sauce, and some is plain strange like Fanta jelly with ice-cream.
Bohra food is characterised by its use of poppy seeds, cashew, ginger, whole warm spices, green chillies and coconut.
Preparing Bohra food seems to involve multiple pans and procedures at the same time. Not much of the food is available in restaurants or is easy enough to make at home if you are not familiar with it. However, there are excellent home caterers and a couple of old takeaway joints that specialise in this food. These are the best options to sample traditional food. Unless you can wrangle an invitation to a wedding and get to pass the salt.
Bohris’ best
Barbat of keri
Aam panna Bohri-style, with the pulp of raw mangoes, cumin and chaat masala.
Bohra kaari chawal
Not anything like Sindhi or Gujarati kadhi chawal, this is made with mutton stewed in ginger, garlic and red chillies and then cooked in a gravy of ground and roasted peanuts, sesame, poppy, garam masala, coconut and tamarind.
Chikole
“This dish is to use up leftover rotis,” said caterer Ali Sethwala. Despite that, it is quite elaborate. Pieces of leftover rotis are added to richly spiced mince and vegetable stew and cooked again.
Dabba ghosht
Mutton pieces are marinated in ginger and chilli, stewed with whole spices in a cashew and onion gravy, topped with an egg and baked. This is Bohri ambrosia.
Dal chawla palido
A veg Bohra delicacy, with layers of garam masala-infused veg pulao and a spiced dal with drumsticks and pumpkin. It’s thick and tangy comfort food.
Foil chicken
Whole chicken marinated with red, green or white masalas cooked in foil to retain the juices.
Gakhar
Similar to the baati in Marwari dal baati, gakhar is thick biscuit-like bread made by steaming or boiling a layered disc of dough and then roasting, baking or frying it. It can be had with tea or dal. The Inquilab book describes the roasted version.
Kalamro
Cooked rice, yoghurt, sugar and thickened milk or cream are ground together and garnished with dry fruits, coconut and sometimes rose petals. This is especially made during the first day of the month of Muharram.
Khichda/Hariso
Pounded wheat is cooked with meat, rice, lentils, coriander, cumin, ginger, and chillies until it becomes like a glutinous porridge. This is then topped with copious amounts of ghee. Hariso is a lighter version made with chicken, topped with mint and had for breakfast.
Lachka
For Muharram, all Bohri families put together a massive thaal. Even the poorest members of the community will have at least ten dishes and those who can afford it will serve 52. The meal is a kind of prayer for the rest of the year to stay as abundant as this meal.
Lachka is an integral part of this meal. Crushed and boiled wheat is mixed with roasted semolina, and plenty of butter and jaggery. It is garnished with almonds, raisins and coconut.
Lagan ni seekh/Sufud
It’s Bohra meatloaf. Spiced minced meat is spread on a tray, topped with onion slices, beaten egg and a drizzle of oil and then baked, cut into slices and eaten.
Malida
A stiff dough is made with flour, eggs, thickened milk and ghee. Rotis are made and crushed. Fried edible gum, melted jaggery, thickened milk and dry fruits are added to the crushed rotis. Malida is also made in Hyderabad.
Masoor/Mung pulao sarki
Bohri lentil pulaos are also made with dum. The lentils are spiced, cooked and layered with boiled rice. Ghee and water are added to the dish and it is shut and kept on a slow heat as the final stage of cooking. Like all dry rice dishes, they are served with a soup or a thin gravy called sarki. Sarki contains ground gram, peanuts, sesame seeds, poppy seeds, coconut, green chillies, pepper and yoghurt. Onion, coriander leaves, the water from the boiled lentils and salt are added to this.
Bohri caterers
Dolly Fatehi
As an Irani married to a Bohri, with a Kashmiri daughter-in-law, Dolly Fatehi has had a wide range of culinary influences. However she only started supplying Bohra cuisine from her kitchen in 1997 after a long corporate career, to “pass time”. “I always had a passion for cooking, and I wanted to stay independent,” she said.
Today her menu card starts by listing her more famous clients’ names, people we read about regularly in the business and society pages. The more delicious and accessible items lie inside: Bohra kaari, dum biryani, white biryani, paya, khichda, raan, Mumtaz Mahal chicken, vegetarian Bohra kaari, levti fish, Bohri kebabs and many more items. Fatehi oversees the orders and uses homemade garam masala.
Call Dolly Fatehi on 98920-56825 from 9am to 1pm, or on 2204-3893 from 7.30pm to 10.30pm. Minimum order one kg. One day advance notice for small orders and two days for larger orders. Biryani Rs 900-Rs 1,000 per kg depending on the price of meat.
Farida Mookhtiar
Farida Mookhtiar works full-time as a nutritionist and spends the first half of her day in a hospital telling people how to eat healthier. Bohra’s home-style food meets most of her checks. “Our food contains all the five food groups,” she said. “It is not so high calorie, and not so spicy or oily.” What’s better than to order otherwise notoriously heavy food from someone who is aware of its long-term effects? Mookhtiar makes khichda, dum biryani, shaami kebabs and chicken gravies. Her specialty, dum biryani is available with mutton, chicken or veggies. “I make it as a hobby due to my passion for cooking,” she said. She makes the food without artificial flavours or colours. She also buys supplies, grinds masalas and cooks herself.
Call Farida Mookhtiar on any day of the week between 2pm and 8pm. Minimum order one kg. Two days advance notice. Biryani per kg: veg Rs 450 , chicken Rs 550, mutton Rs 650 . Kebabs Rs 200 per dozen.
Jeff Caterers
Since 1950, Jeff Caterers has been selling kebabs and biryani from the same Chapel Road location in Bandra. Jeff was the nickname of Zakiuddin M Jafferbhai, the founder, now long gone. His wife Nafisa Jeff Golwala, and his married daughters Tasneem Jeff and Fatima Jeff run the show.
A flurry of excitement took over the takeaway counter the afternoon we visited and everybody wanted us to take a peek into the large aluminium vessel that had just been brought in. The staff said this was a rare chance for us, because few caterers make this dish any more. Inside was a whole cooked lamb, stuffed with biryani, put on a bed of biryani, and surrounded with “chhota” kebabs, shaami kebabs, boiled eggs and seekh kebabs. Jeff sells two to four of these on average in a week and when Bohris are in a celebratory mood, a few might be prepared each day. While they sell some Kashmiri, Mughlai and Chinese dishes as well, other Bohri menu items include dabba ghosht, khichda, lagan ni seekh, paya masala, Bohra kaadi, foil chicken, palidu, zarda chawal, firni, and kebabs.
End of Bazaar Road, Chapel Road Junction, Bandra (W) (2642-1856). Daily 9am-10.30pm. Orders taken on the phone and at counter. Minimum order one kg for dishes, five for thaals. Three days notice, ready items available at the counter. Biryani per kg: mutton Rs 750, chicken Rs 650.
Lazeez Caterers
Ali Sethwala’s takeaway counter sits on the busy Marol Maroshi Road. But even the sound of heavy traffic, fumes and the grey, industrial landscape seems irrelevant once you step inside. The place is suffused with the aroma of dum mutton biryani, its warm, meaty, buttery aroma crowding out all the other senses. The place barely seats eight people on stools facing a narrow counter against three walls, but there is a continuous stream of people who swing by to take a biryani break for lunch or to pick up dinner for later at home. Some people stop by for kebabs, and others halt without intending to, because of the pull of the aroma. While kebabs, butter chicken and biryani move fast at the counter, the real volume of the business happens close by on Church Street, where Sethwala’s company Lazeez Caterers churns out its specialty: Dawoodi Bohra thaals. We had a chance to see an assembled one. The one that Sethwala gave us a sample of had strawberry “soufflé” (strawberry slices in whipped sweet cream topped with a scoop of ice cream), dabba gosht, macaroni and corn salad, chicken with gravy and on cheese sauce, firni, biryani and white soup with chicken and celery leaves.
Lazeez’s other specialties include what he calls “bawda”, or lamb shoulder, as an alternative to raan, which is a whole leg of lamb. Sethwala said the meat melts in the mouth, unlike the leg, which is more fibrous. He makes this in a marinade of spinach, coriander, dill , ginger and green chillies.
Marol Maroshi Road, opposite Zakaria Industrial Estate & Saraswati Bank, Andheri (E) (99675-71152). Daily noon-midnight. Minimum order one kg for dishes, or five for thaals. Two days advance notice, ready items can be picked up at the counter. Biryani per kg: veg Rs 350, chicken Rs 400, mutton Rs 500.
Source : Time Out Mumbai ISSUE 26 Friday, August 20, 2010
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