Do you know from where did butter chicken originate?

Neha Saini
Tribune News Service
Amritsar, July 20

The Punjabi cuisine has always been a symbol of good, rich and flavourful life. Recipes like butter chicken and ‘sarson ka saag’ that have achieved a cult status globally, are a small reflection of the culinary legacy of the land of five rivers, undivided Punjab. While the current Punjabi cuisine has adapted the traditional recipes into modernised version, mixing techniques and marinations, the undivided Punjab, including Pakistan’s, regions of Haryana and Himachal Pradesh, was where the original Punjabi cuisine originated and flourished. Reminding people about the lost recipes of the undivided Punjab, city-based culinary expert Jyoti Arora has been researching and compiling a book that will feature the culinary heritage of Punjab.

“The original Punjabi cuisine did not use complex flavours, marinations or techniques. It used rich, staple ingredients for cooking and had straight forward techniques of cooking. Also, most of the Punjabi cuisine traditionally is a mix of lot of influences. I wanted to explore these heritage recipes and have been working on the book for past one-and-a-half year,” she says. Being of a Kashmiri descent, Jyoti has in the past penned down traditional recipes from Northern Frontier and worked on a book on Amritsar cuisine by celebrity chef Vikas Khanna.

Her book, she says, will reintroduce the Punjabis to their food. “A lot of people don’t know that our most popular recipes, like ‘maah daal’ and butter chicken did not originate in this side of Punjab. Butter chicken is a modernised version of tandoori chicken, a popular recipe of Peshawar. When Punjabis from Pakistan migrated to India, they brought the tandoori concept of cooking,” she says.

According to her research, it was Mokha Singh Lamba, a Punjabi cook, who started making tandoori chicken in Gora Bazar in Peshawar in a small dhaba. “He had two helpers, Kundan Lal Gujral and Kundan Lal Jaggi, who used to work for him. After Independence, they both migrated to Delhi and started a restaurant in Delhi’s Daryaganj. Their recipe of tandoori chicken got popular, but leftover chicken was a problem as we never had refrigerators during that time. So, to keep fresh for a long time, and moist, they made tomato gravy and added to tandoori chicken. This way butter chicken came into existence in 1950,” she says.

Another such revelation in her research is the original recipe of ‘maah ki daal’. “The popular lentil recipe, which has become a flag-bearer of the Punjabi cuisine, used to be cooked without any spice or complex ingredients. The original recipe used only lentils, cooked with ginger garlic and alt-pepper in ghee. Cooked slowly for several hours, the recipe was simple yet packed with flavour. Also, a lost recipe called ‘chanuati gosht’, a nomadic dish that made its way into Punjabi cuisine is also one of culinary heritage we seem to have lost.”

Dedicated to document traditional recipes of the bygone era and a reinvention of the secret recipes of the undivided Punjab, Jyoti says, “It is important to preserve the culinary heritage. It was not just about food, but also cross-cultural references, the nutritional value and otherwise our roots. The book, still untitled, will be out in six months. It’s a tedious task as I have to travel a lot, cook these recipes in original form at least twice or thrice to get them right.”