One of the chefs that played a part in making kacchi biriyani the national dish that it is now, was Haji Md Fazlur Rahman's late father Ismail Miah. Now a veteran chef himself, Rahman runs his catering business out of Bosila, Mohammadpur.
His father started the business 87 years ago, having learned the crafts of the kacchi from the kitchens of Bengal's Nawabs. Rahman kept his father's legacy alive, as he naturally took up the profession of a chef with training he received from his father.
After feeding hundreds of thousands of people, and winning many prestigious awards — Sher e Bangla A K Fazlul Haque Awards, Mahatma Gandhi Awards among them — Rahman has more than earned the right to call himself a master chef, with his catering business being aptly called: 'Masterchef Haji Md. Fazlur Rahman Catering'.
The figure of hundreds of thousands of people — that he cooked for over the last four decades — is quite literal. Just on the occasion of the opening ceremony for the Bangladesh China Friendship Conference Center (now called Bangabandhu International Conference Center), Rahman, as the caterer for the program, served 50 thousand people.
Still true, mostly, to the original style of preparing the kacchi, Rahman continues to oversee the cooking process at his 2,400 square feet kitchen at Bosila. There are some delicate steps during the process, says the veteran chef, that you cannot leave on the staff.
One of these is cooking the rice. "It has to be taken off the heat after the rice is cooked about 50% through. Otherwise you don't get the separation, and the rice comes out lumpy."
There is also the mixing of ghee and saffron that the chef does by his own hands, despite having a 30-staff strong kitchen. As much as Rahman’s kacchi cooking stayed faithful to the origin, it has also evolved. "Originally we didn't wash the meat. It was part of the original recipe to start cooking the meat unwashed (hence the name ‘kacchi’ or raw)," he said.
But that changed around the 80s when people began to find the gamy taste unappetizing. Now the meat is washed with salt water before cooking, to get rid of the tangy smell.
His success in the catering business looked unstoppable. Rahman trained his two sons — Md Shafiqur Rahman (managing director of the company) and Md Asiqur Rahman (deputy managing director) — as chefs and to continue the family business. But then the Covid-19 pandemic broke out.
Like all other businesses, Rahman’s also began to suffer. The catering business was particularly hard hit as it relies on gathering of people, the very thing at the core of all the pandemic-induced disruptions.
This led Rahman to take difficult decisions. He had to cut down staff by half. “Before the pandemic we would do 10 to 12 orders per day, with an average of 50 to 60 people per order. And that’s without weddings,” he said.
Now they get 3 to 4 orders per day for an average of 10 to 20 people per order. There are also no orders for government and corporate programs, which used to be a big part of the business.
All the AGMs (annual general meetings) stopped also because of the ongoing pandemic. Jamuna Bank was a client which used to order food for 700 people every year during its AGM. That has stopped, among business from all the other corporate events.
Forced to adapt to the new realities, Rahman now provides delivery services for much smaller orders, as small as for 16 people. He hopes that pandemic will be over sometime soon. The uncertainty is tough for Rahman as a business owner who went from running a very highly active company just about one and a half year ago to now paying expenses out of pocket.
But he is certain about one thing. Amid the rampant fast-foodization of the kacchi biriyani, food connoisseurs wanting an authentically cooked, high-quality kacchi experience can still get it from Masterchef Haji Md. Fazlur Rahman Catering. The kacchi he serves is still the same ‘dom’ (slow)-cooked-on-coal delicacy that his father started making nearly a century ago. The 64 year-old master chef vouches for it.
