Yes I am aware of the huge hiatus that has occurred here. I have a massive backlog of posts so the next few post won't be at all time accurate.
I am often asked what started me cooking, why I have such a passion for it to this day and why I insist on cooking things that I don't eat (like the mounds of chocolate recipes that other people have to test for me). For me, I struggle to see why people don’t want to cook. It’s a meld of my two favourite things - art and science. To be honest, the vast majority of my happiest memories revolve around it and connected to it is the idea that this is how to make others happy, make them feel safe, make them feel at home.
When we were growing up, the entire family would always eat dinner together at the table and it wouldn't be unusual for us to take several hours to finish a meal because of the conversation. Every major event would normally be celebrated with a family meal and the truly important ones, like Christmas or my brother's recent 30th birthday, would be prepared by the entire family. My mother is possibly the best cook I have ever encountered. Originally a chemist by trade, she understands the science behind the cooking and this knowledge is tempered by a flair for originality and a desire for variety. I can't remember ever having a pre-packaged dinner served to us by her, and we'd never have the same thing twice in a month unless it was specifically asked for. There was never a negative atmosphere around food, we were never forced to eat our vegetables or finish our plate. Instead we were encouraged to simply eat until we were full and if we didn't like something then we could experiment with different techniques to improve the flavour and there was always something else to try. The emphasis was always positive, food was good experience and good things happened around food.
Like most of us, there are certain dishes that remind me of home. Dishes that I’m sure I can never do as well as my mother and that I will always request when I go home. These include; Lasagne, roast potatoes, biryani, Aubergine carriages, mutable, satay and many others. It is the magic of the biryani that I wish to share with you today.
My mother's spice cabinet is like a treasure trove, packed full of spices of all colours flavours and smells. Some of which, I'm sure, still date back to when my parents lived in the Middle East. She uses her herbs and spices like a chemist trying to mix some mystery drug. Sometimes she uses other people’s recipes but more often than not these days, I find that she is much better judge of what should be used. She knows that each piece of meat is different and may need slightly different ratios of spices and that recipes are not infallible. Her biryani, reminds me of her mastery of this. Last time I saw her make it, she did it almost completely by memory, taste, smell and feel. I cannot make it as good as hers because I have not yet learnt this mastery of taste, nor her knowledge of spices. What I do know, is that the smell of this dish is for me, the smell of home.
I would like to emphasise at this point that this is not a quick recipe or a small one. Biryani is traditionally cooked for celebrations; large dinner parties that have lots of people and take all day to prepare. This is an all day recipe, I'd really only recommend trying this if you have most of the day free.
(This recipe is originally taken from a Madhur Jaffrey cookbook that has lived on my mother's shelf for the last 20 years)
Biryani (Mughlai Lamb Biryani)
Serves 6 (enough for 6 hungry people)
Ingredients
- 1 tbsp Saffron
- 15 fl oz (425ml) long grain rice
- 3 tablespoons of salt
- 2 tablespoons of warm milk
- 3 medium sized onions (peeled)
- 4 cloves garlic
- 2cm cube of fresh ginger, peeled and coarsely chopped
- 4 tablespoons of blanched, slivered almonds
- 13 tablespoons of vegetable oil
- 3 tablespoons of sultanas
- 700g boned lamb shoulder, cut into 2.5cm cubes
- 8fl oz (225ml) plain yoghurt
- 5-6 whole cloves
- ½ teaspoon whole cardamom seeds
- 2.5cm stick of cinnamon
- 1/6 of a nutmeg (aprox.)
- ¼ teaspoon of cayenne pepper
- 1 oz (25g) of unsalted butter
- 3 hard boiled eggs, peeled and at room temperature
Wash the rice in several changes of water, you are looking for the water to eventually become clear or nearly so. Drain it and place into a large boil. Add 3 litres of water and 1 tablespoon of salt. Mix and then soak for at least 3 hours (I did warn you that this took a while!).
Put the saffron threads in a small, heavy frying pan set over a medium flame. Toss the threads about until they turn a few shades darker. Put the warm milk into a small cup. Crumble the saffron in and let it soak for 3 hours. Don't forget to smell this mix, saffron milk has the most wonderful fragrance and is rather pretty to look at too.
Cut two of the onions in half, lengthwise, and then cut the halves into fine rings. Set these aside. Chop the remaining onion very coarsely. Put this chopped onion, garlic, ginger, 2 tablespoons of the almonds, and 3 tablespoons of water into an electric blender. Blend until you have a paste.
Heat 6 tablespoons of oil in a 25cm, preferably non-stick, frying pan over a medium-high flame. When hot, put in the onion half-rings. Stir fry them until they are brown and crisp. Remove them with a slotted spoon and spread them out onto a plate lined with kitchen paper.
Put the sultanas into the same oil. Remove them as soon as they turn plump – which should happen almost immediately. Put the sultanas onto another plate lined with kitchen paper. Put the remaining 2 tablespoons of almonds into the oil. Stir fry them until they are golden. Remove them with a slotted spoon and spread them out beside the sultanas. Set aside for use as a garnish.
Now put the meat cubes, a few at a time, into the same hot oil and brown them on all sides. As each batch gets done, put it into a bowl. Don't try to brown all the meat at once, this will lower the temperature of the oil, slow down the process and clog your meat with grease.
Add another 7 tablespoons of oil to the frying pan and turn the heat to medium. When hot, put in the onion/garlic/ginger/almond paste from the blender. Fry, stirring all the time, until the paste turns a medium brown colour. If it sticks to the pan, sprinkle in a little water and keep stirring. Return the meat and any accumulated juices to the pan. Add the yoghurt, a tablespoon at a time, stirring well between each addition. Now put in 1 ¼ teaspoons of salt and a little under a ¼ pint of water. Mix and bring to a simmer. Cover, turn heat to low and simmer for 30 minutes.
While the meat is cooking, put the cloves, peppercorns, cardamom seeds, cinnamon, and nutmeg into a spice grinder and grind finely. Please don't be tempted to use pre-ground spices if you don’t have to. They loose their flavour a lot quicker once they are ground so you will notice a difference in taste if you do.
When the meat has cooked for about 30 minutes, add all the spices from the spice grinder as well as the cayenne and mix well. Cover again and continue to cook on low heat for another 30 minutes. Remove cover, raise heat to medium, and cook, stirring all the time, until you have a thick sludge (about 200ml) of sauce left at the bottom of the pan. Turn off the heat and spoon off as much grease as possible. The meat should be pretty well cooked by now.
Spread out the meat and sauce in the bottom of a heavy casserole dish. Cover and keep warm.
Pre-heat oven to 150ºC.
Bring 2 pints of water to a rolling boil in a large pot. Add 1 ½ tablespoons of salt to it. Drain the rice and rinse in off under running water. Slowly, scatter the rice into the boiling water. Bring to the boil again and boil rapidly for exactly 6 minutes, now drain the rice.
Work fast now. Put the rice on top of the meat, piling it up in the shape of a hill. Take a chopstick or the handle or a long spoon and make a 2.5cm wide hole going down like a well from the peak of the rice hill to its bottom. Dribble the saffron milk in streaks along the side of the hill. Cut the butter into 8 pieces and lay on the sides of the hill and scatter 2 tablespoons of the browned onions over it as well. Cover first with foil, sealing the edges well, and then with a lid. Bake in the pre-heated over for about an hour.
Remove from the oven. If left in a warm place, this rice will stay hot for 30 minutes.
Just before you get ready to serve, quarter the eggs lengthwise (I like to sprinkle the yolks with some freshly ground black pepper and paprika but this is completely a personally preference). Mix the contents of the rice pot gently. Serve the rice on a warmed platter, garnished with the eggs, remaining browned onions, sultanas and almonds.
***There is no picture of this dish because my photography skills are awful, however I enclose the below picture taken from here***
