​There’s only one way to eat the murgh musallam

The delicious irony of murgh musallam lies in a simple, irrevocable fact: fork-tender as the meat might be, you still have to go in with your hands. “Abu’l-Fazl does not give cooking directions for any of these dishes… The dish murgh musallam, for example, was made by removing the bones of a chicken so that it remained whole, marinating it in yoghurt and spices; stuffing it with rice, nuts, minced meat and boiled eggs; and baking it coated with clarified butter and more spices,” she writes. From an iteration popular during the Delhi Sultanate, as Batutta remembers, and a more refined version prevalent among the Mughals, to a panoply of recipes immortalised in cookbooks, such as Madhur Jaffrey’s Classic Indian Cooking; Anuja Devi’s The Essential Indian Instant Pot Cookbook that has a pressure-cooker version similar to my mother’s; Jiggs Kalra, Pushpesh Pant and Raminder Malhotra’s Classic Cooking of Avadh, which swaps out the chicken with bater or, quail; and Maharaja of Sailana Digvijay Singh’s Cooking Delights Of The Maharajas, where the Sailana murgh musallam calls for a luscious stuffing made of poppy seeds, chopped nuts, spices, ghee and an unusual suspect: dry coconut. The few times that I have cooked murgh musallam, I have skipped the whole chicken entirely, opting instead for curry-cut meat that’s more suited to my serves-two pan and fast-city lifestyle. My Mother’s Express Murgh Musallam Recipe Ingredients 1 whole chicken 1 cup yoghurt 3 tbsp mustard oil 1 cup ghee 2 tbsp ginger paste 2 tbsp garlic paste 3-4 onions, medium-sized, halved 2 tbsp red chilli powder 2 tbsp garam masala 2 cups water Salt to taste Kitchen twine or sewing thread Method Before you start, truss your chicken using kitchen or sewing thread.