They are all the Same!

I had promised some recipes in the last blog. But one good recipe isn't good enough for us. The ingredients each have a story to tell. The current form can very easily be derived from socio-political-economical-cultural changes that took place since the whole thing started. So, it all started in Persia and hence we are going to begin there.

Persia, around tenth century AD, Abu Ali Ibn Sina, for the first time documented the recipe of Pilaf. Chelow was the starting point. To make Chelow, the Rice was to be parboiled and drained. The drained rice was then steamed to get exceptionally fluffy rice with all grains separated. The Mughal cooks often used to test such rice by dropping a fistful on ground and checking that no two grains are sticking together. Adding some spices (and not Ghee, Sugar and Cardamoms) while steaming the rice made it into Polow. Basmati rice, Sugar, many of the presently prevalent spices were very expensive in Persia which caused the Polow to taste much like salted, meaty, colorful rice; color being derived from various flowers and legumes. While the Polow travelled towards the land of spices and basmati rice, over Afghanistan, the dry fruits, sugar and spices started becoming more available; mainly due to newly discovered trading routes and increased trade(and the occasional invasions).

Arminius Vambery, a Hungarian professor of oriental languages and a traveller described the Pilaf recipe of the Afghans. A few spoonfuls of animal fat were melted (the fat of the sheep's tail was preferred) in a vessel and small pieces of sheep meat are fried and water is added and boiled till the meat becomes tender. Pepper and thinly sliced carrots are added to this and is topped with rice. As the rice boils in the water and starts cooking, some more water is added till it's fully absorbed by the rice. The pot is then sealed and hot coals are put on top and bottom. The pot is left to steam for about half an hour. After opening, it is served in such a way that all layers are separate; carrot and meat on top.

The Afghan recipe although good was too greasy and insipid to be agreeable to the Indian palate, when it travelled to India. India was transforming itself to have a religion called Hinduism. The cow had become sacred and having meat was both expensive and impious. The Mughals also adapted. Ghee was the substitute used by the Indians for anima fat. Vegetables were the substitute of meat and good rice was strictly Basmati.  And thus the meat was removed; vegetables were added. Some more aromatic spices and sugar were added. The Basmati rice was colored with Saffron and turmeric. Animal fat was replaced by Ghee. The resultant metamorphosed rice is what we love to call Pulav/Polaoo.

Though I have tracked the journey of Pulav to India, it also travelled to other parts of the world. The Uzbek Lamb rice, the Lebanese Rice with lamb shank, and the humble risotto; all were derived from Pilaf. Pilaf it seems is the great grand parent of all modern recipes that constitute fluffy separated fragrant rice.

While chatting with a Lebanese Chef, the concepts of cooking the rice and Pilaf sounded so familiar that I chatted with an Iraqi and an Indian chef. The exact methods of preparation that they maintain in their restaurants remain exceptionally the same. Hardly a few percentages of difference make us all different; it's true for genetics and probably for Pilaf too.

Colored Fragrant Rice

Bengali Sweet Polaoo

Whenever the craving for fried rice(Chinese Style) used to bother me, my mother would start cooking the rice, taking the words fried rice literally. It didn’t taste like the Chinese thing, but it did taste good. In the marriage receptions or the Saraswati Puja or on Durgashtami, we used to have something special. A sweet, colorful, aromatic and savory preparation of rice. The volunteer servers used to say out loud while rushing past eager plates, “Polaoo Polaoo Polaoo!!”.

What we Bengalis love to call as homemade fried rice or “Polaoo” and the people from other parts of India call as “Pulav”, has its genesis in ancient Persia. In fact, the name of the preparation has remained phonetically quite unchanged. The Persians called it “Pilav” or “Pilaf”.

Abu Ali Ibn Sina

In the tenth century, Abu Ali Ibn Sina (Avicenna) or Ibn Sina, recorded various recipes of Pilaf, with advantages and disadvantages of each of the ingredients. When Alexander the great was served the Great royal banquet in Bactria, post his conquest of Samarkand, the rice preparation was so relished by everyone that the soldiers brought it back to Macedonia and spread it all across the Balkans.

Babur

Emperor Shahjahan had dining habits, which had intrigued Manrique (That story comes in my later blogs); he was not a barbarian, he dined in the most exquisite of ways. Shahjahan was the fifth Mughal to rule India. Babur, “The Tiger” was the first one. Babur was a Timurid prince from central Asian kindom of Fergana in the current Uzbekistan. Babur wished to reestablish the Timurid line across the region. At the age of 15, he conquered the city of Samarkand; the place of refinement of Pilaf, a place of sophisticated Islamic culture, the place known as “The pearl of the Eastern Muslim world”. But Babur wasn’t able to retain Samarkand for long. Even many years of survival in the rough mountains didn’t stagger his will. He had his eyes on the capital city of Afghanistan, Kabul. Eventually he did concur Kabul and by 1526 he had launched his attack on India. Babur had come from a culture that took great pleasure in eating. One of the earliest Muslim cookery books described food as the most consequential of the six senses. After losing Samarkand, Babur had spent much of his life in the rough mountains, surviving on the hearty meat based diet of the horse riding nomads of the central Asian steppes.

Afghani Pilau

In the 1920s, the local Afridis had invited the British to watch a display of guns, fireworks and evasive warfare. The British then got an opportunity to sample the kind of food Babur used to have. There were skewers of freshly roasted sheep’s flesh which went with the tea and there was, what they called “Pilau”. Years earlier, a Hungarian scholar who travelled widely in central Asia in the 1860s had described the method of preparation. The methods of such preparations I am still researching and would publish in a later post. But for now, the Pilau travelled with Babur to India.

When Babur arrived in India, he found the local cuisine utterly disgusting. People used to have boiled vegetables and rice with boiled lentils. The utter lack of meat in the local cuisine was of great dislike for Babur. Babur thus brought in his persian cooks to cook for him. Pilau became a part of the royal cuisine, which slowly trickled out of the king's kitchen to the common man of northern india. India being the land of much finer and fragrant rice, further enhanced the recipe and transformed it to Pulav.
Over the centuries Pulav used ghee instead of animal fat, vegetables instead of meat and basmati instead of some other rice. Safron and turmeric were used to color the rice and local spices were added according to the regional tastes. The humble Pulav was made India's own and became the favorite of the elite brahmins and the Maharajas.

Peas Pulav

Centuries later, when we wish to have the Peas Pulav in Mumbai, it tastes starkly different from the Polaoo of Bengal; each bearing its special set of ingredients; each bearing a special meaning to the people who belong there; each associated with the varied traditions of the places. Pulav isn't an independent dish anymore it is eaten with various other sides. The fragrant colored rice, has travelled a long way on the back of horses; through numerous bloodbaths and has metamorphosed into the present day vegetarian special rice which is so entwined into the Indian tradition that some festivals are incomplete without it.




Apologies to the readers for not adding any recipe to this post. All the fine recipes of Pilaf/Pilav/Pilau/Pulav/Polaoo comes in the next post.