Food Talk
Know your onions

Tracing its roots to the court of Akbar, the delightful Do Piaza is a chef’s favourite, writes Pushpesh Pant

Connoisseur’s recipe

Ingredients
 Mutton/chicken 1 kg
(Vegetarians can substitute paneer for meat)
Onions 1 kg
Ginger paste 30 gm
Curd 250 gm
Pepper corns 1 tsp
Red chilli powder 2 tsp
Coriander powder 1 tbs
Cloves 5 to 6
Green cardamoms 6 to 8
Nutmeg 1/4th grated
Cooking oil 250 gm

Method
 Clean wash and pat dry the meat/chicken and marinade it in garlic ginger paste mixed with salt and curd for an hour. Grind half the onions and finely slice the other half. Fry the sliced onions golden brown.

Remove and dry. Fry the ground onion till brown. Add the spice powders except nutmeg and fry for 30 seconds, then add the marinated meat, stir well and cover and cook on low heat till the oil begins to separate.

Sprinkle some water in case the meat sticks to the bottom of the pan. Then add the fried onions after crushing. Add a cup of lukewarm water to obtain thick gravy. Sprinkle the nutmeg and garnish with onion rings.

THERE are as many explanations for the name of this delicacy as there are varieties of onions. A legend traces the roots of this delightful dish to the court of the Grand Mughal Emperor Akbar who was inseparable from his favourite courtiers popularly known as the Navratnas or the nine gems. One of them Abul Fazal, a gifted poet, chronicler extraordinary, diplomat and an epicure was nicknamed Mullah Do Piaza and this, we are told, was his favourite dish.

This account is disputed by the Royal gastronome late Maharaja Digvijay Singh of Sailana. He was of the view that the name had nothing to do with onions; adding any vegetable to a meat dish made it a Do Piaza.

With due respect to this grand old man, gourmet par excellence and wonderful ‘hands on cook’ in the tradition of Raja Nala and Prince Bhim, colourful characters from the Mahabharata, one must protest and register dissent. Raja Sahib strives to refute the thesis that Do Piaza means adding two types of onions or twice during the cooking process or that the term implies twice the quantity of onions than the meat used he does not share any evidence in that can convert us. Adding a vegetable to the meat makes it a saalan. The Do Piaza has a personality of its own, with a texture and taste distinguishing it from korma, kalia, saalan and ishtew. Due care must be taken otherwise what begins as a Do Piaza can easily end as a half-hearted ishtew or imitation of a saalan.

Housewives and cooks all across India subscribe to the belief that onions are essential ingredient in the Do Piaza. Some apply ‘twice the quantity’ formula, others opt for the recipe that uses onion twice during the cooking process in two different forms — finely sliced or ground and fried before adding the meat and then roughly chopped midway after the meat has browned and can be cooked in its own juices plus the water released by the raw onions.

Those who are more creative combine all the prescriptions. They even use spring onions with their greens to lend a distinct character to their Do Piaza.

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