Patience key to Indian cookery

Carefully cutting around a pastry top, it's lifted off the bowl to reveal a lamb shank leg inside-the tender meat effortlessly falling off the bone as it's removed and mixed into the rice.

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This is a traditional Kolkata-style biryani, made in a clay pot, with saffron, baby potatoes and fresh plums, and sealing with dough helps keep the steam in and the rice moist while the lamb slow cooks.

"There are about 18 to 20 variations of biryani in India. This is a different style to what we normally cook on the north side of India," says chef Rohit Ghai on the newly-opened Vatavaran in London.

"I think a lot of people's only experience [of biryanis] is Indian takeaways or most people, they make biryani the North Indian-style-there are two versions that are very common. But if you dig into it, you come to know that every single region has their own kind of biryani."