Butter chicken in the veins

Unlike regions countries even continents are cities not credited enough for creating cuisines I think so Take the lsquodesi Chinesersquo for instance for all other epithets attached to itmdashlsquoChindianrsquo SinoLudhianvi etcmdashsurely food writers will admit itrsquos actually Calcutta cuisine to start withLikewise Bombayrsquos ragda patticemdashwhat else could it be but a street concoction influenced by North Indian migrants running the streets who mixed the eastern lsquoaloo tikkirsquo with a particular type of cooked chana thatrsquos even added to the Bombay pani puriIn that vein whatrsquos the greatest Delhi invention that conquered North Indian restaurants around the world rather swiftly Butter chicken BC But of course to think of it even the British claim ownership to BCrsquos sibling the chicken tikka masala CTMmdashattributing it to Bangladeshi chefs at local curry housesOn one end a Pakistaniorigin chef Ahmed Aslam Ali says he invented CTM at Shish Mahal restaurant in Glasgow in the 1970s At the other its first recipe is attributed to a 1961 British cookbook by one Mrs Balbir Singh In between are slightly phoney theories about kitchens of Mughals Of course itrsquos seen as a Punjabi dish after allOnly that outside of Delhimdasheven their wedding banquets will domdashBC is a joke everywhere Notably Punjabrsquos capital Chandigarh and its most loved Pal Dhaba where the oil floating over BC is enough for the Indian government to levy a higher taxOver two decades in Bombay Irsquove only sworn by one restaurant for authentic BCmdashthe word having spread now its price exponentially rising by the daymdasha place called Ranjeet Da Dhaba in Chembur This is the bowl in Bombay that can legitimately scream ldquoMein Dilli se hoon BCrdquo Surely the owners are tooFor herersquos whatrsquos most broadly uncontested about BC if you let alone the details that there used to be a restaurant 1920s onwards owned by a HinduPunjabi Mokha Singh called Moti Mahal in Peshawar This is where originated the practice of cooking chicken in a tandoor otherwise used to make breads roti naan etc Hence tandoori chicken was invented PostPartition Singhrsquos employees moved to DelhiThese refugees it is said met up accidentally at a booze shoptheka From there began the idea of reestablishing Peshawarrsquos Moti Mahal in Delhirsquos Daryaganj neighbourhood in 1947mdashintroducing the tandoori chicken to Delhi alongsideThis new restaurant had three partners one was the moneybag the other two were chefsmdashwith the same first and middle names Kundan LalmdashGujral and Jaggi These guys eventually exited the Daryaganj Moti Mahal business in 1992Whatever Irsquove known about BCrsquos invention is thanks to Monish Gujralrsquos book Moti Mahalrsquos Tandoori Trail That it came out of a need to keep fresh the chicken roasted in a tandoor by adding tomato as preservativesmdashin Moti Mahal Daryaganj Thatrsquos how BC first became a thingMonish knows this because Besides having set up a massive chain of Moti Mahal restaurants all over India years later he is the grandson of Kundan Lal Gujral who passed away in 1997 You can sense from Monishrsquos book that Gujral Sr was quite the hobnobbing face of the original Moti MahalWhich Nehru as Indiarsquos first PM loved enough to appoint as his official caterer Nehru was quite a BC aficionado Irsquom told As were apparently the global dignitaries who tried it with him If I recall right though Monishrsquos book doesnrsquot quite mention the other Moti Mahal BC chef the other Kundan Lal Jaggi who died in 2018 aged 94Why have we heard of him now In 2019 a restaurant called Daryaganj came up with three branches in Delhi now claiming to be from the ldquoinventors of butter chicken and dal makhanirdquo This is run by descendants of chef JaggiThe BC invention on this restaurantrsquos menu relates to Jaggi once packing up for the day other kitchen staff gone at Moti Mahal in 1947 when a big group showed up There was only some tandoori chicken left to serve He made ldquobutter gravyrdquo to go with itmdashwith handcrushed tomatoes butter and spicesmdashto suffice for allSince pandemic followed the new Daryaganj restaurant chain coming up I donrsquot know if a legal case is being pursued over the two BC ldquosecret recipesrdquo between Gujral and Jaggi families Or maybe both should be invited over to Arnabrsquos show for a nondebateHaving finally induced myself into a legit foodcoma at the new Daryaganj restaurant at Aerocity in Delhi I can say with much authoritymdashit doesnrsquot matter who invented BC rather who consistently serves it better The dal makhani here is equally to die forDaryaganj has two BCs on its menu ldquoOriginal 1947 Butter Chickenrdquo which tastes a lot like from old restaurants like Kwality in Delhi Bombay etc but way way better and then therersquos the creamier brownish boneless ldquoTodayrsquos Butter ChickenrdquoThis latter modern dish has yet no parallels in the world over about half a dozen restaurants standing adjacent to each other in New Delhirsquos Pandara Road Market which came up in the late 1950s Therersquos a debate over your preferred outlet from that lotmdashPindi Chicken Inn Gulatihellip I just go for HaveMore Thatrsquos where I still dream to have more and more BCMayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture He tweets mayankw14Send your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper