Vegetable Dum Biryani - Exotic Basmati Rice Dish with Vegetables

This is the third recipe from the first menu : a rice dish. Rice plays a prominent role in an Indian menu. Just as Naan/Roti or Chapati is necessary in an Indian meal, so is rice. If it is an elaborate rice preparation with lots of spices and vegetables or meat, then it is generally served along with a raita or yogurt. Else, you would serve plain or lightly flavored rice with a dal preparation.

Biryani is a very flavorful recipe that has its origin in the Mughal cuisine. Dum (which means pressure) Biryani traditionally is made by cooking the rice with vegetables or meat in an earthen pot, which is sealed and cooked on hot coals. It is an elaborate recipe and again a popular feature in restaurant menus. When you look at the rice section,  you will find many variations listed on a restaurant menu, which are mainly based on the ingredients that are cooked along with rice. Vegetable biryani is my favorite rice dish. I had tried to make this a few years ago, however I found the process very laborious. So, I was reduced to relying on ordering it at restaurants.

A couple of years ago my friend made a delicious vegetable biryani and she swore that it was a very easy method that she used, with lots of shortcuts. And, of course I kept requesting her to make it every chance I got. Then I spoke to another friend about the way she makes her vegetable biryani and she also said that it is a simple recipe and gave me the detailed method of making it. Finally I was convinced and decided to give it a try. So, I  married the two recipes, using the short cuts that my first friend suggested and using some of the additional exotic spices and yogurt from the second recipe and the result was absolutely delicious and also very easy to make. With this recipe I am no longer daunted by this exotic rice dish and I can't wait to make it  again.

Ingredients
for the garnish
2 large red onion, sliced into thin slices
1/4 cup cashewnuts
1/4 cup mint leaves, chopped
1/2 cup cilantro leaves, chopped

for the marinade
1/2 cauliflower, separate into florets
1-2 carrots, cut into thick slices or diced into thick pieces
1 cup peas
1/2 cup french/green beans cut into 1/2 inch long pieces
1 cup yogurt
1/2 tsp red chilli powder
1 tsp salt
1/8 tsp turmeric powder
2 green chillies
4 garlic cloves
1.5 inch ginger
3 javentri flowers (optional - see tips)
3 tbsp biryani masala
1 lemon, juiced
1/2 cup mint leaves, cut chiffonade style into thin ribbons
1/4 cup cilantro leaves, chopped finely
1/4 cup fried onion
1 tbsp oil

for the rice
2 cups basmati rice
2 bay leaves
2 javentri flowers (optional)
2  inch long cinnamon pieces
2 black cardamoms/badi elaichi
5 cloves
2 cups of vegetable broth (optional. replace with water if not available)
2 cups water
salt to taste

Method
Slice the red onions. Separate the slices out and let it dry for a couple of hours. Then deep fry the onion till golden brown and crisp. Drain on a paper towel and keep aside. Use 1/4 cup of this in the marinade and the rest as garnish. Roast the cashew nuts in a little oil till lightly brown.

Make a fine paste of the green chillies, ginger and garlic.
Take yogurt in a bowl deep enough to hold all the vegetables. Then add in the chilli, ginger and garlic paste, turmeric, chilli powder, salt, lemon juice, biryani masala, mint leaves, cilantro leaves, javentri flowers, crushed fried onion, oil and mix well. Then add the vegetables to this mixture and set this aside for at least an hour up to 8 hours (or overnight).

Wash the rice three times and discard the water. Then add in the 2 cups broth and 2 cups water. If you don't have vegetable broth, add 4 cups of water. Add the bay leaves, javentri flowers, black cardamon, cinnamon, cloves and salt to taste and cook the rice using your preferred method. Be careful to not overcook the rice. In fact you want it a little underdone as it will finish cooking with the vegetables in the oven.

Now, take a deep oven proof glass dish or an oven proof deep pot with an oven safe cover. Next, we need to layer the vegetables and rice alternately and then cook this in the oven. Start off with layering the vegetables at the base of the pan. Then garnish this with a handful of crushed onion, cashews and some mint and cilantro leaves and then spread a layer of rice on top of the vegetables. If it is a large pan, you may end up with just these two layers. If it is a narrower pan, then you may get two vegetables layers alternated with two rice layers. Keep layering till you are done. The base layer should be vegetables and the top layer should be the rice layer. Finally garnish the top with fried onions, cashews, cilantro and mint leaves.

Now, cover the pan completely with aluminium foil. There shouldn't be any vent created in the foil, so double wrap it if needed. If  the pan has a lid, then place this oven safe lid on the foil covered pan and cook it in the oven for about an hour at 350F. The vegetables will create steam as they cook in the heat and that will help complete the cooking process for the rice (creating the "dum" effect). Serve hot with raita or yogurt.

Tips
Javentri flowers are difficult to find, even in the Indian stores. I couldn't find them here and when I was visiting San Jose, I chanced upon them at an Indian store there, I bought a large packet. These have a mild nutmeg like smell and their main function is to add a nice fragrance to the rice. However considering there are several other spices that are used, it is not an essential ingredient, so don't let that stop you from making this recipe.
I prefer to cook the rice in a pressure cooker for one whistle and then I take it completely off the heat and let   it cool.  Sometimes, I just boil it in a saucepan, keeping it partially covered and take it off the heat when it is semi cooked. Initially, I  used to use a glass oven safe dish to cook the biryani, however I realized that my cooking pot is also oven safe and have started using that as it is a wider and deeper pot.
You can use frozen vegetables as well instead of using fresh vegetables. Just rinse them in water and then add to the marinade.
If you are using broth, then be careful about adding salt when rice is being cooked. Broths are already salted, even the low sodium ones.
If you can find fried onions and roasted cashews, you can directly use those and skip the step of preparing the garnish.

Aloo Gobhi - Curried Potatoes and Cauliflower

This is the other curry dish that I had in the first menu list. Aloo in Hindi means potato and Gobhi is cauliflower. It is again a very popular dish. Aloo gobhi can easily be found on any Indian restaurant menu, especially in the US. It is a great preparation. It is simple to make, and very tasty. It has very few components and is probably one of the simplest recipes in the Indian cuisine. I always wonder how and why such a simple dish finds such prominence on Indian restaurant menus and perhaps it is because of the simplicity that it is such an attractive dish. Well whatever the reason, it is great on a party menu or as part of your weekday dinner. It also doesn't need a lot of fussing with and you can let it cook, while you get other things ready.

Ingredients
2-3  tbsp oil
1/8 tsp jeera/cumin seeds
a pinch of asafoetida
1/8 tsp turmeric powder
1 inch ginger, cut into thin strips
2 potatoes, diced into medium pieces
1 cauliflower separated into individual florets
1-3 green chillies, to taste, slit along the length
salt to taste
cilantro to garnish (optional)

Method
Heat the oil and add the cumin seeds to it. Once they start to crackle and turning a light brown, add the asafetida, green chillies, ginger. Fry for a minute till you can smell the fragrance of the ginger and then add the turmeric. Immediately add the potatoes and stir well. Cook for a couple of minutes and then add the cauliflower florets. Next add the salt. Stir so that the cauliflower florets are also well coated with the tempered oil and salt and then let it all cook till the vegetables are cooked through. Garnish with cilantro and serve hot.

Tips
You can reduce the oil to 2 tbsp when using a non stick pan. You can cover the pan to speed up the cooking process. However, be careful and remember to take if off every few minutes and check. It is easy to overcook the potato when the pan is covered and it will get mushy.

Shahi Paneer - Cottage Cheese in a Delicious, Rich, Sauce

Shahi paneer is a very delicious curry/gravy preparation. The curry is a rich sauce, made with cashewnuts. "Shahi" means royal and it is truly a dish fit to be served to a king. It is a very popular dish and generally found at most Indian restaurant. The gravy is milder than a brown/red curry preparation and has a slight sweetness due to the use of cashwenuts. It has a light orange color and the authentic preparation is generally colored using saffron, though most of the versions that you find in restaurants are colored a deep orange with food color.

It is a dish that will always be a hit with your guests. Serve it hot with naan or tandoori roti.

Ingredients
2 cups cubed paneer
2 tbps oil
1 tsp ghee or butter
5 black peppercorns
1 2 inch cinnamon stick
3 cloves
2 bay leaves
1 large red onion, cubed (else use 2 medium red onions)
1/4 cup raw cashwenuts
1/2 cup water
3 garlic cloves
1 inch ginger
2 green chillies, to taste
1/4 cup yogurt
1/4 cup cream
1 pinch saffron
1/2 tsp garam masala
salt to taste
3 green cardamoms

Method
Boil the onion in some water till it is cooked and pink, then drain the water. Alternately, you can microwave it for about 2 mins, till the onion is softened. Then puree it in a food processor or mixer. Then make a paste of the cashewnuts. Add about 1/2 cup of water to grind the cashews.
Whisk the yogurt so that it is smooth.
In a non-stick pan, add the ghee then shallow fry the cubed paneer pieces till the paneer pieces are lightly browned. Grind the cardamom seeds to a fine powder.

In a deep pan, heat the oil and to this add the cinnamon, bay leaves, cloves, and peppercorns. Cook for a couple of minutes till the spices are fragrant and  then add the chillies and the onion puree. Cook for a few minutes. Meanwhile make paste of ginger and garlic and add it to the pan and cook the mixture for a few minutes. The raw smell should disappear, but the don't over cook the gravy. The color of the gravy should remain pinkish white. Cook on low heat, so that you don't burn the gravy or down brown it.   Next add the whisked yogurt to the cooked onion gravy and cook for a couple of minutes till it gets incorporated into the gravy. Next add the cream and a pinch of saffron to the gravy. Cook it all together for a minute and then add the garam masala and cook for another minute. Then, add the cooked paneer pieces and cook it all together for a minute or so.

Sprinkle the cardamom powder over the curry before serving.

Tips
Soak the cashews for a few hours. Then it will be easier to grind them into a fine paste. It is important that your gravy doesn't smell like raw onion or garlic, else it will not taste good. If you don't have a non stick pan to cook the paneer, then add a little more ghee to the pan so that the paneer pieces don't stick to the pan and disintegrate. You can skip this step entirely, if you prefer to have your paneer in its original softer form. You can use readymade paneer or make paneer at home. The recipe can be found here.

Three weekends and Three Great Menus

I have spent the last three weekends in a cooking frenzy. We were entertaining friends and had them over for lunch or dinner over the three weekends. And I wanted to make it a special occasion each time. So, I put in a lot of thought in creating the menu for each meal. In total I made three exotic meals. Each meal had mainly Indian dishes though most of the desserts were quintessentially American.  I didn’t make any appetizers because the main course consisted of several dishes. Each meal had two vegetable preparations, dal or yogurt based curry to be eaten with rice, a rice preparation, salad and Indian bread.  Homemade yogurt was an additional side.

As a result of these wonderful weekends, I now have a lot of food photos and will be posting all the recipes in the upcoming weeks. (I am yet to move the older photos, back to my laptop from the back up hard disk. So the addition of these new photos comes at the most opportune time. I can procrastinate that task for a few more weeks).

It took a few days for me to come up with each menu, after a lot of careful thinking and some discussion with family and friends about what combinations of food would work the best. So, the final menus were as follows.

Menu#1

Main Course

• Shahi Paneer - A preparation of paneer (Indian cottage cheese) in a rich cashew nut and saffron based sauce)
• Aloo  Gobhi – A curried preparation of potatoes and cauliflower florets, with ginger and cumin flavorings
• Vegetable Dum Biryani – An exotic rice preparation which has alternate vegetable and rice layers, with exotic flavors and dressed with fried onion, cashew nuts and saffron.
• Boondi Raita –A yogurt based dip which has boondi (a fried snack made from chickpea flour)
• Lachchedar Paratha – Layered bread made from wheat flour
• Home made yogurt
• Sliced salad – A mix of cucumber, onions, green onion, tomato, and radish slices. Served with lemons and green chillies

Dessert

Peach, nectarine, plum and raspberry cobbler with vanilla icecream and fresh fruit

Menu#2

Main Course

• Matar Gravy – Peas prepared in a rich and exotic gravy of onions and coconut.
• Baingan Bharta – Roasted eggplant in Indian spices
• Dal Fry – Lentil soup with tempered seasoning of garlic and chillies
• Jeera rice – Cumin flavored rice
• Puris – Fried Indian bread made with wheat flour
• Aam Ras – Mango pulp
• Salty Lassi/Taak/Mattha – Salted, spicy yogurt drink
• Homemade yogurt
• Sliced salad – A mix of cucumber, onions, green onion, tomato, and radish slices. Served with lemons and green chillies

Dessert

• Gulab Jamun – Deep fried, milk based (mava) balls  soaked in sugar syrup

Menu#3

• Chole – A spicy chickpea/garbanzo beans preparation
• Kadhai Paneer - A preparation of paneer (Indian cottage cheese) in a tomato based spicy gravy with green bell pepper and onions
• Pakode Wali Kadhi – A yogurt based preparation made with besan/chickpea flour, with onion fritters added to it
• Jeera rice - Cumin flavored rice
• Naan
• Homemade yogurt
• Sliced salad – A mix of cucumber, onions, green onion, tomato, and radish slices. Served with lemons and green chillies

Dessert

• Mango Cheesecake
• Mixed Berry Ice cream

So if you are in a fix and need a menu to impress your guests with an exotic Indian meal, just choose one of these menus above, and I can guarantee that your guests will thoroughly enjoy the meal.

I will be posting the recipes for each menu in the following blogposts. I will try and go in sequence, however, if you want me to post any one of these recipes earlier than the other, please let me know in the comments section or on the Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/pages/Recipes-for-all-Occasions/146379555394858).

Sindhi Kadhi - A Delicious Stew

This is a recipe that my aunt gave me recently and asked me to try it out. It is called Sindhi Kadhi. It is a delicious stew or curry prepared with chickpea flour (besan) and vegetables. However, it does not conform to my traditional view of what “kadhi” should be. All the different versions of kadhi that I have made or eaten so far have always had yogurt and besan/chickpea flour as the main ingredients. The main difference in all these versions was the seasoning that I used, however the main ingredients always stayed the same i.e. yogurt and besan. I had never made or tasted Sindhi Kadhi prior to this attempt, and I am glad I finally did. It has definitely changed my perception of what kadhi can be. This particular version of the kadhi does make use of the besan flour, however it differs in the fact that, instead of using yogurt, tamarind water is used to give it a sour taste. Also, this recipe has a lot of vegetables. And while I made it with the vegetables that my aunt listed, I am sure you can change the combination of the vegetables based on what is available. The end result is a hearty, healthy and delicious stew. We enjoyed the preparation and I will definitely be making it again.

Ingredients
1 tbsp oil
1/8 tsp jeera/cumin seeds
pinch of asafoetida
1/8 tsp turmeric powder
1 cup okra/bhindi/ladies fingers ( diced)
3 tsps besan/chickpea flour
1 cup potatoes (1 large or 2 small potatoes), diced into big pieces
1 cup banana squash/red pumpkin/laal kaddu/ laal bhopla,
1 cup cluster beans /gavar /gowar, diced
1 drumstick, cut into 1-2 inch pieces
chilli powder to taste
5-6 curry leaves
1 tsp tamarind paste or 1 inch ball of tamarind
salt to taste

Method
If using tamarind paste, dissolve it in about 2 cups of water and keep aside. If using regular tamarind,  soak it in warm water and then remove the pulp and dissolve it in 2 cups of water and keep aside.

Heat the oil. To this add the cumin seeds. Once they being to crackle, add the hing/asafoetida, and the okra pieces. Stir fry the okra till well cooked and a little browned. Then add the besan flour and cook the besan flour till you get the fragrant roasted smell for the besan. Then add the cluster beans, drumstick pieces, potato and pumpkin. Stir it and add the turmeric powder and chilli powder and cook it all for a minute.  Then add the tamarind water, stirring continuously while adding the water, so that no lumps formed. Add the curry leaves. Add more water if needed. All the vegetables should be covered with the water. Then cook till the curry till it starts to boil and thicken. Add the salt. Taste and add a little more of tamarind paste if you want a more sour taste. Check to see if the vegetables are cooked. The curry shouldn’t be too watery or too thick. Garnish with cilantro leaves. Serve hot with white rice.

Tips
Steam cook or pressure cook (1 whistle) the guvar/cluster beans and the drumsticks so that they are semi cooked and softened.  This will reduce the overall cooking time. Do not precook the potato and pumpkin, since they do not need a long cooking time and will get cooked through as the curry boils. If precooked, they will turn to mush. Fry the besan and the okra well. The okra needs to be crispy and the besan needs to be a brown color which will impart a brown color to the curry.
If you decide to change the vegetables, use hearty vegetables which will not become mushy when the kadhi is being boiled. You can also add in some tomatoes in this recipe. They should be added along with the potato and other vegetables. 

Fennel Pasta

I formatted my laptop recently and along with that deleted all the photos that had been stored on the machine over the past few years. These included ALL the photos that we had taken over the last few years. I panicked and called up my husband to report the terrible news to him.  That was when he gave me the good news that he had backed up the photos two days before and we hadn't lost all our photos. Whoosh! That was a terrible 10 minutes, while I tried to figure out how to retrieve the photos or what I could do. I am so glad that he had backed up the photos by chance and it is definitely a lesson in backing up data more frequently.
Well, so I still haven't gotten to moving the photos back to the laptop, but I did take pictures of some dishes I made recently, so I have something to tide me over for a while. This is a fabulous dish. It has a wonderful aroma and a very mild and pleasant taste.

I hadn't cooked with fennel before, well not the plant itself, just the seeds  I had a great time exploring this new vegetable. The fragrance took me back to the old days when we used to plant fennel in our backyard and wait for the plant to bear the tender seeds. Those seeds used to taste so sweet and delicious, we used to enjoy it. However, we never thought of using the actual plant to cook any dish. This was a pasta dish that was introduced to me by my sister-in-law made when I visited them this summer. It is a perfect pasta dish for summer! I absolutely loved it and she graciously shared her recipe with me. So here it is.

Ingredients
1 fennel bulb and its leaves (discard the stalks. See details in method below)
3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
1 tsp fennel seeds
1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1 lemon, zest and juice (optional)
1/2 packet of linguini pasta (about 16 ounces)
water to cook the pasta
salt
pepper
parmesan cheese

Method
In a pan deep enough to hold the linguini, take enough water to submerge the pasta. Add salt to the water, sufficient enough to make the water salty and then cook the pasta per directions on the package.

Cut the leaves off the stalks of the fennel and chop them finely. Do not use any stalks. Next, cut the large stalks off the fennel bulb and discard them. Then, divide the bulb into two and then remove the core of the bulb. Then slice the bulb into thin slices.

In a large pan (sufficient to hold the pasta), heat the oil and then add the fennel slices to the oil. Cook the fennel for about 10 -15 minutes till the fennel slices are cooked through and become soft. Cook on medium heat, so that they don't burn. The fennel slices are tough and will take some time to get cooked through. Next add the garlic and the fennel seeds to the pan and cook for a couple of minutes, till the garlic is cooked through. Then season a little with salt and pepper. Then add the cooked pasta to the pan and mix it all together. Next, add the chopped fennel to the pasta and lemon zest. Mix well. Add a little lemon juice and mix well. Cook for a minute or two till all the ingredients are well blended. Sprinkle parmesan cheese over it and serve hot.

Tips
You can cook the pasta till it is al dente if you wish or cook it for a few more minutes till it is softer. I prefer the pasta being at a softer texture. Al dente is when the pasta is cooked through, but it still has a bite to it. The fennel core is pretty obvious and can be seen as a triangle at the base of the bulb when you cut the base into two parts vertically. If you are confused, it will be the tougher, central part of the bulb which is difficult to cut through.
When you zest a lemon, remember to stop grating the lemon rind when you reach the white part of the lemon skin called the pith. This is the bitter part. The zest is just the yellow part of the rind.