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Amuse Bouche 
 
From Kraft Mac and Cheese to Yasmeen’s Biryani  
By: Farha Ternikar 
 
I didn’t learn how to cook until graduate school; I had successfully resisted being a good 
Indian daughter. Growing up, I had no interest in cooking or chores, until it was a necessity 
when I was in Chicago on a very modest stipend in 1999. A typical student, I survived on 
Kraft Mac and Cheese and a lot of frozen and fast food. 
 
Like many Desi (South Asian American) immigrants who have the pleasure of living in 
Chicago, I soon discovered Devon Avenue in North Chicago or “little India,” home to more 
than a few dozen Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi restaurants, cafes and grocery stores. 
My first few trips to what we simple dubbed “Devon” were with my sister who was living in 
Naperville, and we feasted on nihari (a north Indian/Pakistani beef stew), paratha (a flaky 
and layered  bread usually made on a tawa, an iron skillet), chicken biryani (a layered rice 
dish), and chana masala (a chickpea curry). It was during these trips to Devon that I started 
to miss my mother’s cooking. Eating at Sabri Nihari (which was our favorite restaurant at 
Devon) was great, but it wasn’t like eating at home 
 
And what was most surprising to me as an American-raised immigrant was not how my 
love of food and cooking grew in Chicago, but how my love of biryani and Indian cooking 
grew.  
 
Eventually I got married in Chicago, and then we’d get takeout on weeknights when neither 
of us had time to cook. This is also when the long phone calls to my mother began because 
the longer I lived in Chicago, the more I missed homemade food. I asked her what Shaan 
Masala packets to use to make basic chicken curries or what spices I should have in my 
cabinet. 
 
My mother Yasmeen’s biryani was famous amongst my childhood friends in Florida but 

also my other Desi Muslim friends from college and graduate school. Hena was my closest 

friends when I lived in Maryland right before I started graduate school. Both our parents 
were Muslim, but unlike my parents who are from India, Hena’s family is originally from 

Pakistan. These distinctions amongst South Asian immigrants are important because of 

how food often brings American Indians and Pakistanis together, but also because of how 

“halal” food or meat eating is a distinct shared practice among Muslim immigrants. Meat 
biryani, chicken or beef or lamb, is something that I thought every Desi mother cooked. 

I also assumed everyone’s mother’s biryani was as good as mine. Though Yasmeen would 

often vary the recipe, it was always a  time-consuming endeavor that required at least two 
ingredients—aged basmati rice and halal chicken. But Hena was raving about my mother’s 

biryani because, although my mother is Muslim Indian, and her own family is Pakistani, she 

said, “your mother’s biryani is much better than mine or my mother in law’s.” At that time, I 

was certain that my mother’s biryani was based on a secret family recipe and that she had 



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tracked down all the “authentic” spices in the 1980s in Florida that her own mother-in-law 

had taught her to use in cooking biryani from scratch.  

It was only years later that  I realized that my mother’s biryani is not always from scratch. 

She often uses whatever spices she has around, sometimes she switches up the recipe, and 

sometimes she too uses Shaan Masala. Like Meredith Abarca’s term “chiste,” my mother 

created her own twist on all of her traditional recipes1. Maybe my mother’s recipes were 
never authentic in the way food scholars or “foodies” trace Indian recipes back to the 

regions of Gujarat, Hyderabad or Punjab in India, but it tasted authentic and original to my 

sisters and immigrant friends. Yasmeen’s story of learning how to cook was in many ways 

less straightforward than my own. When she left India in 1969 to marry my father and 
move to London, she would learn how to practice cooking among other new Indian British 

couples with very few resources or access to Indian grocers. They often used parsley 

instead of cilantro, or made vegetarian biryani if they couldn’t afford chicken. 

Growing up in Tampa, we couldn’t get biryani in restaurants or find recipes easily in 

cookbooks. Our mothers were the keepers of these Indian immigrant recipes. My mother’s 

recipes in particular were taught to her from her mother-in-law who was South Indian, her 

sisters who were North Indian, and also from her own experimentation because she was 

orphaned at a young age. 

As an adult in the 1990s, I began to appreciate my mother’s cooking because I realized it 

was “good” Indian food. I couldn’t necessarily describe what that meant but it tasted better 

than my Indian or Pakistani friend’s mom’s food. And I didn’t care if it was made from 
scratch, organic or local. What I did come to realize is that my mother’s food was not only 

good food, but when I finally moved away from home, biryani became my comfort food. As 

much as I might still crave Kraft mac and cheese, I now crave Yasmeen’s biryani. And 
during the pandemic in particular, this is a recipe I came back to repeatedly. 

Yasmeen’s biryani 
3 cups of basmati rice 
2 lbs. of halal chicken 
3 tablespoons of garlic paste 
2 tablespoons of ginger paste 
1 tablespoon of garam masala 
2 cinnamon sticks or 2 teaspoons of cinnamon powder 
2 teaspoons of ground cardamom 
6 black cloves 
5 tablespoons of olive oil 
2 large yellow or white onions 
2 teaspoons of salt 
Cilantro and lemon wedges for garnish 
 
Cooking biryani is a 3-step process. The chicken is marinated the night before in the spices. 
There are two different methods of cooking rice. Half cooking the rice then layer the 



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chicken and bake it in the oven or cook the rice and chicken fully then layering the two 
dishes. Biryani is known as a special dish because it is known for the layering of chicken 
with the rice which makes it distinct from pulao rice dishes. My family always serves 
biryani with raita, a yogurt-based dish with cucumbers, onions, tomatoes and cilantro. 
 
My mother Yasmeen uses halal chicken. Before the 1990s when halal chicken was easily 
available, she cooked with kosher chicken. I often make this recipe with whatever local or 
natural chicken is available. She also switched from cooking with ghee to vegetable oil to 
olive oil over the past 3 decades. Lastly, she and my sister both garnish their biryanis with 
lemon wedges in the final step of preparation. 
 
Afterward December 2024 
I wasn’t sure when I would return to working on this project. My mother survived a stroke 
this past March 2024 at the age of 73. When I got the call from my sister, I was in Pittsburgh 
on sabbatical, so I had to abruptly pack up in 24 hours, and I chose to spend the rest of 
Spring 2024 semester in Tampa caring for my mother. 
 
My mother was released from the hospital after two weeks, I slept in the hospital at her 
side for those weeks. When she did come home, she was originally on a special diet. After a 
few weeks, she craved her own food, but she couldn’t cook because she had permanent eye 
damage, and her recovery was slow. So, I was the one who slowly became the home cook.  
 
During Ammi’s recovery, her friends were dropping off trays of keema, kebobs, biryanis, 
haleem, nihari, dal and much more. But what I was starting to seriously crave were 
vegetables in any form.  So that’s where my cooking for Ammi started. I began to cook with  
whatever vegetables that were in the house, sometimes frozen or canned, seldom fresh or 
local or organic. I started by making a really basic aloo matter (potato pea curry). She 
seemed to approve, then I made green beans, aloo gobbi (potato with cauliflower), and 
eventually cumin carrots which is something she would never usually eat, and she loved it. 
  
And then I finally overheard the conversation on the phone with her and my sister, Saba,  
when she said, “Don’t worry Farha is really taking care of me she doesn’t leave my side, and 
she cooks as good me too. I’m even eating sabzi….”.   Maybe I was never the ideal Desi  
marriageable girl, but through feeding Ammi, I become the ideal Desi daughter.  
 
 

*This Amuse Bouche is part of a larger book manuscript, Food and Faith Networks: Muslim 
American Women and Culinary Placemaking (under contract). 
 



 Ternikar, Biryani                    Digest: A Journal of Foodways and Culture 11 (2025): 63-66  
 

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Image 1: Biryani, photo by the author 

 
 

1 Abarca, M.E. (2023) Charlas Culinarias (Culinary Chats): A Methodology and Pedagogy Expanding a Food 

Consciousness. Food Culture & Society. 1-13. 


