Thursday, November 6, 2014

Malabar Mutton Biriyani


Every night   just after winding up everything  and just  before hitting bed I get some free time, a nice 1 hour for me and that’s the only time I really get to sit down and do things I like. Even though I always think I should make  the time useful and do a  post here I don’t get into that mood and I rather spend the time watching TV or  trying to finish  a book which I borrowed almost a month back from the library. Some days I just don’t do anything and just spend time in social media and that’s it pretty much it, so until I find motivation, my  blogging is going to take a back seat I guess.

These days more than cooking I find shooting it rather challenging. If it’s a weekend our day usually start very late and by the time lunch / dinner is ready we are usually so hungry so if I take the camera out for taking pictures with a hungry child and hubby, it would be like putting myself into trouble, so to be safe I don’t take that risk !Anyway few weeks back when   I made this  mutton biriyani  I  took some extra effort to take pictures to blog about it. We don’t eat mutton much and hardly buys mutton at home as we tend to avoid red meat as much as we can, so I didn’t have a trusted mutton biriyani recipe with me .That's when I came across this recipe in  Kothiyavunnu and decided to give it a go. It’s an awesome recipe and have made this few times now and every time  it went down as a treat for us  !


Recipe adapted from - Kothiyavunnu
Ingredients
For rice
Biriyani rice/ Jeerakasala rice/ Basmathi rice – 2 cups ( I usually use Jeerakasala rice for all my biriyani's which I bring from Kerala )
Onion – 1 ( thinly sliced)
Water drained from cooked mutton – 2 1/2 cups
Boling water – 1 1/4 cup
Lime juice – 1 tbs
Cinnamon stick – 1
Cardamom – 4 pods
Cloves – 4
Ghee – 1 tbs
Oil – 1 tbs
Salt
For Mutton masala
Mutton – 500 gm
Onion – 4 ( sliced lengthwise)
Tomato – 1
Cinnamon stick – 1 inch thick stick
Cloves – 3
Cardamom pods – 3
Bay leaf – 1
Star anise – 1
Peppercorns- 1 tsp
Green chillies – 15
Ginger – Thumb size piece
Garlic – 4-5 cloves
Red chilli powder – ½ tsp
Turmeric powder – ¼ tsp
Yogurt – ½ cup
Water – 1 cup
Lime juice – 1 tbs
Salt
Ghee – 2 tbs
Oil – 2 tbs
Mint leaves - few
For garnishing
Fried onions- Handful
Cashewnut halves – 2 tbs
Golden raisins – 2 tbs
Ghee – 2 tbs
Coriander leaves
Method
Make a paste of green chillies, ginger and garlic in a mixie and keep it aside.
Marinate the mutton with above paste along with chilli powder, turmeric powder, salt, yogurt and whole garam masala and keep it as long as you can(preferably overnight ) or at least for ½ an hour.
In a thick bottomed saucepan/ wok add ghee + oil and sauté the sliced onions until it’s nicely browned.
Add in chopped tomatoes and cook until it’s mushy.
Add the marinated mutton, salt, mint leaves, 1 cup of water and transfer it into a pressure cooker and cook  for 4-5 whistles.
Once the pressure is released drain the 2 1/2 cups of water from mutton and keep it aside.
Cooking Rice
Soak the rice for ½ an hour, drain and keep it aside
In a big pan add oil+ ghee and add the whole garam masala and sauté for a minute.
Add in the sliced onions and sauté until soft.
Add the rice, salt, lime juice and fry the rice for a minute or so.
Add the mutton stock, remaining water and bring it boil.
Cover and cook the rice until done.
Layering
In an oven proof dish spread a layer of rice evenly.
Add mutton masala on top; continue layering until all rice and mutton masala is used up.
Cover the dish tightly with a lid or seal it with maida and dum cook it in a preheated oven of 180 degree C for 15 minutes.
Garnishing
In a small pan add ghee and fry cashewnuts until golden brown and raisins until plump.
Open the biriyani pot and garnish the biriyani with fried onions, cashewnuts, raisins and some chopped coriander leaves.