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Mutanjan

Sweet coloured rice with candied fruit

If zarda is the everyday celebration rice, mutanjan is its showy older sibling: the grains are dyed in three or four colours, layered with khoya, tutti frutti, nuts and small milk sweets, and steamed so that a spoonful looks like confetti. It is a Lucknowi and old Delhi tradition that came to Karachi with the families who migrated in 1947, and it still turns up at nikah dinners and on Shab-e-Barat in Karachi and Hyderabad, as well as in the old mithai shops of Lahore. The texture should be soft, sticky-sweet and rich with ghee, the flavour heady with cardamom and kewra. The thing that ruins it most often is stirring the coloured rice together, which blurs the colours into a muddy brown. Chef's tip: colour the rice in separate bowls, layer it in the pot without mixing, and only fold it once, very lightly, after the dum.

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