Haleem is one of the most popular dishes in Ramzan
Ramzan may be about fasting, but the holy month has become as much about the feasting. Shoaib Daniyal takes a canter through the history of everyone’s favourite iftari dish, haleem, and explains how it has survived into the modern age, before being redefined by the subcontinent.
Haleem is a porridge of dalia (broken wheat), various dals and meat (traditionally lamb, but also goat, buff/beef or, sadly, chicken). And while a lot of Mughlai food does claim foreign origins, this is largely apocryphal. Mughlai cuisine's (and maybe India's) most popular dish, the biryani, seems to have no existence outside South Asia. Neither do any of our qormas, qalias or saalans, at least not in the way we make them. Haleem is an exception, one of the few dishes to which a definite foreign origin can be ascribed.