This is a Bengali Muslim style chicken biryani; really an offshoot of the old Awadhi style–I’m not really equipped to go into the historical reasons for this in great detail (and am away from my books) and so will say only that it is a much lighter style of biryani than those accustomed to the dish as served in Indian restaurants in the US might expect and really shows off the aroma of the rice scented with cinnamon etc. and the meat that is cooked along with the rice. I don’t normally believe in chicken biryani–but we got it with chicken so that the boys would have something to eat. This was quite good nevertheless–or it may be the case that we overrated it a bit as it was the first biryani we ate on this trip (the disasters served in restaurants in the US are an insult to this great dish and I crave it terribly on trips home).