Taste of the royalty

Paradise Hotel famous for its Hyderabadi biryani is bringing the favourite dish of Mughals the Zafrani biryani to the city of Nizams. The 64-year-old restaurant is hosting a Zafrani Biryani Festival across all its outlets in Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Chennai and Visakhapatnam from February 1 to March 31.

The exotic biryani fest is on during lunch and dinner at all their dine-in restaurants and takeaways and also through their delivery partners – Swiggy, Food Panda and Zomato. Explaining about the Zafrani Biryani, Vijay Anand Bakshi, Corporate Chef, Paradise, said “Zafrani Biryani thrived on a very secret ingredient, the recipe of which was held only within the confines of the royal Mughal family.

As India opened up its trade to other countries, people were slowly exposed to the fact that the much-protected ingredient of the dish served at the Royal Palace was the Zafran or Saffron - a very expensive ingredient that made all the difference in creating that certain zing of a taste and flavour and aroma. Hence, the name of the dish itself was centred on the special ingredient that was used.”

Chef Bakshi stated that the Paradise 'Zafrani Biryani Festival' is an effort to present, revive and re-introduce to the die-hard Biryani lovers a rare and much-loved cuisine of the Nawabs and their guests. The Zafrani Biryani is available in two variants – Chicken and Mutton.

About preparing the flavourful dish he shared: “All our methods to prepare and serve the Zafrani Biryani have been planned down to the minutest of details. From the kitchen to the table, we are confident of delivering the best that we can.

We have identified and sourced each of the ingredients for them to blend so as to give the best flavour and aroma. Our 'secret' ingredient, the saffron, has been sourced specially for this festival and yet we have priced our variants at affordable pricing to ensure that each Biryani lover is able to taste our special offering."

Zafrani Biryani is little mellow on the spices and it may seem little bland to Hyderabadis, however, the chef says that they made little tweaks in the recipe to suit the palate of the people, who are not used to it. “We kept the recipe intact but made a few changes to cater to the local tastes. One will not feel that it is bland,” he said.