One of my favourite Indian dishes is biryani, essentially a Muslim dish the origins are something of a mystery and are shrouded in dispute. One theory is that it started as a one pot meal cooked up for battle weary soliders in bygone days, highly seasoned rice, meat or vegetables would be layered in a pot and cooked over an open fire.
The biryani we are most accustomed to here in the UK is mostly served in the Sindhi biryani style, spices are toned down from any of the original versions and a far cry from the exotic regional variations served throughout India.
Home cook Pratibha Karan has dedicated a whole book to this delicious comestible, simply called 'Biryani' the book covers culinary, cultural and historical aspects of the dish. Pratibha gives us not just definitive recipes but rare and old dishes such as biryani made with oranges, rose biryani and Qabooli biryani, full of extraordinary recipes and beautiful photography 'Biryani' is on my wish list.
My version of biryani is of the hotchpotch variety, I use up odds and ends of leftover chicken, meat, fish or vegetables combined with spices and par boiled rice, everything goes into a large pan and is fried off. Patak's make a biryani paste and I have even used this rather than grinding my own spices, however, having looked into this highly seasoned rice dish I realise my hotchpotch version just doesn't do the biryani justice.
The concept behind layering rice, meat and spices is that the flavours are absorbed into the rice as it starts to steam. A rather more complex dish than I had given it credit for, biryani is certainly worth making by the traditional method (although my hotchpotch version is very delicious!)
Qabooli biryani
Recipe
Grind these spices to a powder
1/2 piece of cinnamon
2-3 cardamoms
1/2 teaspoon peppercorns
250g rice
Pinch turmeric
3 onions, finely sliced
1 teaspoon garlc paste
1 teaspoon ginger paste
1 cup yoghurt
Juice 2 limes
Bunch fresh coriander, chopped
1/2 cup milk
Salt
Oil
Ghee or butter
Par boil rice for 6 minutes, drain
Heat a splash of oil in a pan, fry onions until golden
Remove half of onions and set aside
Add ginger and garlic, fry until golden
Add turmeric followed by yoghurt, stir briskly until the contents come to the boil, remove from heat
In a large lidded pan smear base with oil and spread half of the rice on the base of pan
Spread yoghurt mix onto rice
Sprinkle half of ground spices, half of coriander and lime juice over rice
Add another layer of rice, sprinkle with milk, dot with ghee or butter
Add remaining spices, coriander and fried onions, cover with tightly fitted lid, simmer for 10-15 minutes until the rice starts to steam
Serve piping hot
Persian biryani is cooked in the same way with added raisins and a banana halved length ways and sat on the top layer of rice during cooking, I serve this with a thin omelette and a vegetable curry
Hotchpotch biryani
Really, as the name suggests, there is no set recipe, I tend to use a teaspoon of each: ginger paste, turmeric, cumin seeds, ground coriander and ground cinnamon
Fry 2 onions in oil until golden, add spices and a couple of cloves of garlic
Add cooked rice and the rest is up to you......cooked meat or chicken, vegetables such as cooked potatoes and peas and cubed paneer cheese
'Spicy food and I have a close relationship-an obsessive one, in fact, if it's spicy, I want it. I want to sweat and shake and go half blind from the searing pain.......which, now that I put it that way seems really suggestive. But spicy stuff is addictive, that's a known fact of science.'
-Maureen Johnson
Love Donna xxxxxxx
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