Day 60: Chicken biryani

This recipe is now up there with the highest ranking recipes that I’ve ever made. Dear Husband loved it. What was it? Why, Chicken biryani, of course!

A lot of ingredients were needed but all very simple to do. I started off by extracting the seeds out of 5 cardamom pods. I gave them a bit of a bash in a freezer bag using a rolling pin and set aside. I moved onto the basmati rice by putting it in a heat-proof bowl, seasoned it with salt and covered it with boiling water. I also covered it with some clingfilm. It was onto the frying bit then by which I melted butter in a large saucepan before adding sliced onion, chopped garlic, grated ginger, turmeric, ground cumin, ground coriander, cayenne pepper, a bay leaf (I told you there were a lot of ingredients!), a cinnamon stick and the crushed cardamom seeds. The whole lot fried for about 10 minutes and I kept stirring it every minute or so to stop all the spices sticking to the bottom of the pan. After that, I added in four breast of chicken which I diced up and cooked for 3 minutes – well, probably more than 3 minutes until each piece was an opaque colour. While the chicken was cooking, I rinsed the basmati rice under cold running water, drained it and then added it into the chicken along with chicken stock. Once it came up to the boil, I popped the lid on and let it simmer for 10 minutes and just gave it an occasional stir – again, for fear of burning! At the 10-minute mark, I dished it up, stirred in freshly chopped coriander and sprinkled with flaked almonds. Now, I know you can’t have a biryani without raisins but Dear Husband doesn’t like them. Em, correction, he despises them so I didn’t even bother trying to sneak them in! Weird thing is, he likes grapes!!! Go figure. And men think us women are weird at times?!!!

The verdict…

He scored it 9 marks out of 10. I’m doing really well as last two days as that’s two nines in a row! He absolutely loved this dish and, to be honest, I was glad that I excluded the raisins as I might not have achieved the same high score! In terms of preparing the recipe, it reminded me of making homemade chicken tika massala (which is time consuming) so I was glad that I reaped the rewards for my efforts. In terms of the 15-minutes preparation which was stated on the recipe, it probably took me closer to 25 minutes but I’m not going to hold that against the recipe. A lot of ingredients to prepare but all very simple to do – just stick exactly to the quantities so use measuring spoons - something I would be lost without! I’ll definitely be making this one again so it’s made The List and I think that Dear Husband has a new recipe to replace the modified chicken tika massala that I make so often on a Friday night. As long as I don’t come up with a modified version of this recipe, he’ll get the real deal every time I make this one.