Gosht Beliram vs. Kunna Gosht: A tale of tomatoes, tradition, and taste

Silver Spoon

In Assam, where I come from, the thumb rule for cooking meat is: no tomato with red meat. Cook it with whatever you like — potato, pumpkin, gourd — but no tomato. It took me a whole lot of patience to explain to my Punjabi husband and the extended family that adding potato to meat is not adulteration by any stretch of imagination. It’s a jugalbandi — of flavour and texture.

They refused to buy it. As a compromise, I cut out the potato part, but stood my ground on the ‘no tomato’ rule. Not in my kitchen!

So when I was told to try out Gosht Beliram by Vernika Awal, who has conceptualised the new-look Ikk Punjab restaurants for owners Deepika and Rajan Sethi, at a newly opened branch on Madhya Marg, I was a little apprehensive. That’s because all mutton dishes in Punjab taste the same, even if they come with different names – mutton curry, Mutton Rogan Josh (the Punjabi version of Kashmiri Rogan Josh). They all have tomato-based gravy.

For the uninitiated, Gosht Beliram traces its origin to the royal kitchen of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, where Khansama Beliram, when asked to cook something different by the Maharaja himself, prepared a lamb dish with a rich gravy. Taken in by its flavour, texture, and taste that came from slow cooking, the Maharaja decided to name the mutton curry after his cook, and the dish came to be known as Gosht Beliram.

“Has the recipe of Gosht Beliram been preserved in its original form or has it been getting makeovers over the years?” I asked Vernika, preparing the ground for my next question — whether tomatoes are generously used for this dish too.

“We have tried to keep it as authentic as possible but even then I think the recipe has acquired a few modern twists here and there over the years,” she said. As I was getting nowhere, I tried again! “Do you think Khansama Bel

iram would have used tomatoes for this dish as in all likelihood, tomatoes, a foreign import, would be a rarity those days?”

“True, tomatoes came to India about 300 years ago, but Punjabis did adapt to it pretty well. And since Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s reign falls in this period, I am sure his kitchen staff would have access to tomatoes,” she replied.

Her answer titled me towards the other choice that I had — Kunna Gosht, a homely type dish cooked in a handi with watery gravy. More of my kind! This is a dish that comes from the Pakistan side of Punjab. In fact, Ikk Punjab, which started its journey seven years back from Delhi, and has recently added quite a few outlets in Delhi, Gurugram and Chandigarh in recent months, aims to showcase cuisines from both sides of Punjab in their authentic form. So, it has quite a few dishes from the ‘other’ Punjab — Chapli Kabab, Dohra Kabab, Sajji and, of course, Kunna Gosht, which is giving Gosht Beliram a stiff competition.

“Kunna Gosht is popular but it lacks the oomph of Gosht Beliram,” Vernika injected this piece of information. For the obvious reason – Gosht Beliram originated in a royal kitchen and Kunna Gosht in a common man’s.

So, Gosht Beliram it is, I thought to myself. And as if on a cue, a young boy placed a metal handi full of aromatic mutton and a khameri roti on the side.

The aroma was enticing. The rich creamy gravy was dark brownish. The colour came from a generous amount of fried onions and dry-roasted crushed jeera.

The mutton, which was marinated with a special garam masala for hours, before Chef Manoj Kumar slow cooked it, melted in the mouth. The khameri roti, which was fresh out of a clay oven, was the perfect companion. The tomato issue soon got relegated to the background, my regional biases forgotten as the symphony of khameri’s crunch and Beliram’s creaminess conquered my taste buds. Like it did to Maharaja Ranjit Singh centuries ago!

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