Food: Mumbai’s cook who cooks on stone

Very few people in Nafees Ansari’s round know his genuine name. “I’m mostly addressed as Haji Bhai Patthar Ke Sanam, and we utterly like a title,” he says with a laugh, when we accommodate him during his home in Byculla’s logging Badlu Rangari Street. The nickname comes from a fact that Haji Bhai is Mumbai’s usually ready who cooks on stone.

“The slabs, two-feet-long with a breadth of 2.5 feet, have been alien from Saudi Arabia, and any weighs tighten to 50 kg,” he says, as he labours to lift one with a assistance of Mohammed Haroon, his partner of 20 years. He places it on a customised steel stand, that is afterwards lonesome with china foil before cooking. “The foil ensures a feverishness of a blazing spark is intact,” he explains.

Haji Bhai cooks on stone

The 50-year-old, creatively from Hyderabad, has been practising this technique for a final 26 years, where meat, fish, rice and vegetables are baked on vast slabs of mill on a sigri (stove) with blazing spark as fuel. The technique, traditionally compared with winding cultures of a Arab Bedouins, dates behind to 2,000 years. “I initial came opposite a stones when we went to Saudi Arabia to work as a ready in 1982. There, they mostly make lamb curries and tikkas on it,” says Haji bhai, who stretched a judgment to embody vegetables and rice, when he returned to India 8 years later. Now, a caterer has 7 stones in all, and any has been designated a type; from chicken, mutton and seafood to even Jain. “I keep a Jain mill apart from a rest,” he says.

Haji Bhai with partner Mohammed Haroon. Pic/Bipin Kokate

Interestingly, all of Haji Bhai’s dishes have a prefix; patthar, and are named patthar ka murg, patthar ka pulao and patthar ka korma, among others.

To support to Mumbaikars’ different tastes, he prepares not only Mughlai equipment like duck tikka masala, dabba gosht, bakra tandoor, though even desi Chinese dishes like boiled rice and Jain equipment like palak paneer and unfeeling korma.
He feels a stone, graphic a tawa, does not intermix a flavours of a beef and vegetables, though absorbs it to give a graphic taste. To expostulate home a point, he offers us a play of murgh patthar khandeshi, an Afghan specialty. And, he’s right.

As we punch into a proposal chunks of duck blended with garam masala (cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, cumin and nutmeg) and curry leaves, it only melts in a mouth. The abounding cashew bulb gravy, eaten best with pav, is conjunction too prohibited nor too spicy, though packs a right punch. “The prominence of this plate is a savoury essence of a curry leaves, and of course, a duck that has been cooking for hours with a spices,” he says.

“Cooking on mill is rather simple. All we have to do is feverishness adult a lava mill by fixation spark in a stand. Place your meat, fish or vegetables on tip and afterwards simply ready to your really possess taste. With small or infrequently no oil during all, a health advantages are easy to see and with a virginity in taste, we will suffer any bite,” says a chef, who was invited to Juhi Chawla’s Breach Candy chateau final year to ready a dishes for an IPL party. “Shah Rukh Khan desired it,” says Haji Bhai, who can be invited to people’s houses to and ready a food live. He routinely charges R6,000 for 500 diners. “People are extraordinary to see what a food tastes like, so my case always has a limit throng during parties,” he says. While cooking beef in a vigour cooker would need during slightest 7 to 8 whistles, here a beef gets baked in reduction than 5 minutes. The time-consuming aspect is a heating of a stone. “It takes dual hours for a mill to feverishness up. We use 20 kg of spark for this. Once hot, it lasts for over 4 hours.”

The lifespan of any mill is 5 years. “When we returned from Saudi Arabia, we suspicion of sourcing stones from Maharashtra to see if we could it lift off. But a stones burst since of a heat,” says a father of three. Once a mill is imported, it goes by a routine of cutting, finishing and polishing. Haji Bhai also creates it a indicate to frequently purify a stones with an iron brush, though a repairs happens during catering visits. “To lard a feverishness from a stone, we dash a lot of H2O on it, that ends adult deleterious a stone.”

While a cost of a mill is tighten to Rs 3,000, importing it costs him some-more than Rs 54,000 for each. “But it’s value a income spent,” he smiles.

You can hit him on 9322343280

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