Asma Khan’s biryani is famous–you have to pull many strings to get a table to sample it at her acclaimed restaurant Darjeeling Express in Covent Garden, London. Khan is, in fact, one of the hottest people in food in the UK. In 2017, she became the first British chef to be filmed for her own episode of the Netflix series Chef’s Table.
It is not surprising to learn that her signature style of cooking is influenced by her childhood in Kolkata. The city is, after all, famous for its biryani and biryani fanatics. As she says, “It’s everything that most Indians recognise: what you eat on the streets, what you eat in your house, and what you eat at a wedding. The food of the rich and the food of the poor.”
In 2022, Khan published a book of recipes, Ammu, named after what she calls her mother. It is a story about their relationship and the food that binds them together. The book has 100 recipes divided into five chapters for each decade of her life–from dishes that celebrate her childhood to what she cooks for her children in London today.
Here she shares a recipe for the perfect biryani from the book.
Ammu’s Chicken Biryani
“Biryani was always made for big celebratory occasions. In my mother’s family, it was usually made with khasi, or goat, and cooked in a giant pot with layers of rice, meat, and potatoes infused with spices and saffron. This recipe is a very personal one. This biryani was made just for the five of us—my parents, two siblings, and me. On days when there was some good news, or more typically when something had gone wrong—from my brother losing a cricket match or me not doing so well in my exams—Ammu would get this biryani on the table and suddenly everything seemed okay! This is also usually the last dish I eat at home before I make the five-hour car journey from my parents’ home to the airport to catch my flight to London. I always felt that layered in that biryani were things my mother couldn’t say. When the biryani arrived on the table, it felt like Ammu’s secret code, telling me she loved me.”
