Food Talk
Common delicacy

There was a time when bataer was considered the food of royalty. Only the very rich enjoyed it or served it to their guests. Nowadays, farmed birds are much more affordable and can be bought dressed, writes Pushpesh Pant

DUDHIA BATAER

Ingredients

Quails (dressed) 12
Milk 5 cups
Black peppercorns (pounded) 1½ tsp
Fennel seeds 4 tsp
Fennel powder ½ tsp
Green cardamom 10
Cloves 6-8
Cinnamon (1 inch long) 2 stick
Bay leaves 2
Saffron powder 2 tsp
Gram flour 2/3 cup
Red chilli powder ½ tsp
Lemon juice 2 tbsp
Salt to taste
Oil to deep fry

Method

Prepare a batter with one tsp of saffron, one cup of milk, fennel powder, chilli powder, salt, gram flour and lemon juice. Boil the rest of the milk in a pan, with pepper for about a minute, then add quails and the remaining ingredients, except oil, and boil on low-medium heat till tender. Remove the quails, retain the coating of the masala. Heat oil in a pan, dip the boiled quail in the batter. Deep fry till a crisp, cream coloured crust is formed. Remove to a platter and serve.

Quails are quintessential stuff memories are made of. This bird, one was told in childhood, is to chicken what Darjeeling is to ordinary teas and basmati to rice. The birds, brought to the table with proper ceremony, were treated with extraordinary respect as they were believed to be closely related (not really, as we found later) to the rarest of rare species, the Himalayan Quail.

Bataer was prepared with great fanfare whenever (very, very rarely) about a dozen birds were gifted to the writer’s physician father by a grateful shikari patient. Salim Miyan, who worked in the hospital as chowkidar but claimed lineage from a shahi bawarchi family in Rampur, was called to help out. The recipes were not shared and the whole operation was conducted secretively.

One must confess that the results were never disappointing. No water was supposed to be added as the birds are believed to release an unpleasant ‘aroma’ if such sacrilege is committed. They have a distinctive flavour and care must be taken not to let spices overpower it.

A musallam bataer is barely a large morsel—great to pick up and polish off as a starter. Draped with thick sauce like gravy, it makes a happy marriage with either roti or rice. There was a time this delicacy was considered fit enough for a king—only the very rich enjoyed it or served it to their guests. A rare piece of good fortune was described as andhe ke haath bataer lagna—a blind man bagging by chance a tasty quail.

There were expert baheliyas, bird catchers, who made their living by providing the dainty little birds in large numbers to their patrons. So tiny is the chidiya that to keep it in tact for the flesh to be savoured, it is best to ‘capture’ it in snares; then came a time—thanks to the gluttonous appetite of the gourmet—when the poor feathered creature was brought to the verge of extinction. A ban was imposed on killing and consuming bataer. The memories, however, were too sharp to fade.

We were quite surprised a couple of years back to see bataers listed in the menu and were reassured when told that these were imported Japanese quails—farmed in the vicinity of the Capital with utmost regard to the sentiment of the Greens by law-abiding citizens. Needless to add, we splurged shamelessly.

Thankfully the farmed birds are much more affordable and can be bought dressed. The purists may keep complaining that the taste is not the same but we on our part are happy with the birds in hand! We are very happy to share a recipe we managed to purloin during a visit to Lucknow.

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