The Nizami Ramadan Repast

The search of haleem continues and the disappointments continue. Luckily sometimes the rest of the food makes up, or in this case more than makes up for the haleem. Hyatt has flown in a chef from Hyderabad to recreate the dinners of the Nizams. This is not an iftar buffet, but a dinner buffet. An invite to any royal food festival is exciting, but during Ramadan, festival like the Nizami past are more exciting. It gives us a chance to sample Ramadan food from around the country.

And the first thing he seems to have re-created is the Raan. Literally a lamb leg piece, which colloquially is a funny phrase, the first dish served on the plate was a stunner. Succulent and flavourful with spices adding depths of flavour without overpowering the natural flavour of the mutton, this one dish was enough to make dinner great. There were other starters, a nice but not-juicy sheekh kebab, an excellent chicken kebab and two wonderful vegetarian dishes, a cheesy grilled cauliflower and a soft vegetarian kebab, but the Raan was too good to miss and fill up the tummy with others.

But nothing prepared me for the biriyani. Kacche ki Gosht biriyani. First of all, I was surprised to see it on the menu. A kacche gosht biriyani style I thought is a dying art. The amount of patience that it requires is humongous and the training involved in making good ones is mediocre. So much so that some articles suggested that there were only a handful of those khansamas alive in Hyderabad. I believe it is being replaced by more mediocre techniques. That is why I was surprised to see it on the menu. Why is this so difficult? This type of biriyani technique uses raw meat over long grain rice and is cooked till the meat is, well, cooked. Cooking raw meat over rice is not an easy technique, so rarely do hotels make this form of biriyani. The outcome was a biriyani with a lot more flavour than ones from most hotels. Well cooked mutton and the flavours of slow cooking seeping in resulted in a lovely biriyani. A good brinjal side dish completed the dish.

The haleem though was a disappointment. It was partially cooked and finished off in the stove, something that was a turn off even before eating, and tasting it only confirmed the worst. The biriyani more than made up for the terrible haleem. 

The sweets of the festival were a mixed bag. The Qubani Meeta is something that should be left to the classics, especially in a festival like this. An alien flavour spoilt what would have been an otherwise very good dish. A little probing revealed that it was flavoured with Roohafsa, a rose flavoured syrup used extensively in the region. That ended up making the dish a little too sweet, even for someone like me with a sweet tooth. The double ka meeta and payasams were good enough to finish a meal with an awesome biriyani.

This festival is all about the biriyani and the raan. The menu changes everyday so I hope you get these when you visit. Fingers crossed! The festival is on till the 25th of June! 

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