For the love of Biriyani

I Love Biriyani, any kind, veg or non-veg :) well, who does not? It’s one of those universally loved food. My love affair with biriyani has been lifelong thanks to my mom. My mom is a great cook, her awesome biriyani are always a great hit with everyone. And when I got married, I found out my mother-in-law makes great biriyani too. Both my mother and MIL make awesome biryani with just a pressure cooker. I kind of don’t attempt making biriyani when either of them is around. I make biriyani too with a pressure cooker or the automatic rice cooker; they taste good, like homemade, nothing to brag about or feature until now :). LOL. Thanks to my new friend Subha who shared a recipe with me recently and was totally thrilled to see how simple it was. Every time I googled for dum biriyani, it called for huge vessels with lid that are oven safe (which I don't have) and then the double work of cooking the gravy separate and the rice separate, layering it. Phew! Just reading it I would give up. Cos for me biriyani is a one pot cooking thing, easy and simple. 

Well back to the feature biriyani, The Chicken dum biriyani. You can find the recipe in the link. I just made very little changes to the recipe. I added the whole spices (the cloves, cinnamon sticks etc.) and black jeera (caraway seeds) to the rice while cooking; I saw this in another video. I also did not add whole black pepper corns, cumin powder or seeds and garam masala in the chicken marinade. Instead I added some biriyani masala I had at home. Used red food coloring dissolved in water instead if saffron. I did not have fried onions too, so I sautéed some thin slices (grated) onions till dark brown and used them.

Comfort food - The Indian way

When it’s raining heavily and the day seems to almost turn into night, all I can think of is warm comfort foods :) . So when it started raining cats and dogs couple of days ago, I found the perfect opportunity to try an Indian comfort food recipe, which I accidentally came across.  It’s an Indian chaat called Matar Chat, made from dry peas. Here’s the recipe I followed, it’s super simple and yummy. It’s a great combination of flavors. I love chaats. The only change I made was use green dried peas instead of yellow dried peas. The taste was unbeatable, its one fool-proof dish that would make your taste buds dance, did I mention that I love chaats :) LOL. Well, one tip I’ll give you is to add the dry ingredients while the peas are really hot, and then just let it sit for some time so that they can soak up all the flavors.