Hyderabad-inspired “Pakki” Biryani

I shall call this Mutton Biryani – Cyberabadi Biryani for lack of a better name. And I expect you to treat it with respect, just like the Nizams revered their Biryani. It may not be the authentic kachchi Biryani the royalty of Hyderabad is used to having, but quite close.

Close enough for second helpings.

I have many Biryani-loving friends in the real and virtual world – Finely Chopped, who can have biryani for breakfast, lunch and dinner. The very enthusiastic Tojo Roy, who waits and demands that Biryanis be made and posts be written without any delay. And our dear Amarnath Babu who has every right and reason to denounce any attempts towards Hyderabadi cuisine if it isn’t authentic. After all, he has a Blog of Hyderabadi recipes.

I have made this pakki biryani for a dinner tonight and will serve it with some cucumber raita and salad. A glass of red is paired well with a biryani like this.

The basic recipe is from here, though I have tweaked it a bit. So while I document it, you go watch the YouTube video and come back to my post.

Ingredients for Hyderabad-inspired “Pakki” Biryani are:

For the meat:

1.5 kg goat meat, bone in (you can use lamb, but I wouldn’t recommend chicken)
A little over 1 cup plain yogurt
1 cup fried onions
2 tablespoons green chili paste
2 heaped tablespoons of ginger-garlic paste
Half teaspoon mace powder
Quarter teaspoon cardamom powder
1 tablespoon coriander powder
Half teaspoon red chili powder
1 tablespoon crushed black peppercorns
2 black cardamoms, crushed
2-3 green cardamoms, crushed
1 stick of cinnamon
4-5 cloves
2 bay leaves
Handful of coarsely chopped mint leaves
Handful of coarsely chopped coriander leaves
Quarter cup vegetable oil
Salt

Ask your butcher to cut the goat meat in bigger than regular curry pieces. Lean mean is not needed for biryanis, so its okay to keep some fat on the meat pieces. I would recommend you ask for a baby goat’s shoulder portion.

Marinade the meat with all the ingredients except salt and leave it overnight in the fridge.

Find a heavy-bottom pan from your kitchen and transfer the marinated meat into it. Place it on low-medium heat and let it cook for 15 minutes. Once the heat spreads to the pan and the meat starts to show signs of being “cooked”, crank up the heat. This way the yogurt in your meat will not curdle. Add salt.

Cover and cook the meat till it starts falling off the bones. It should take you about 45 minutes to get your meat cooked on medium heat.

While the meat is getting done, we will simultaneously do the rice for the Biryani too.

Ingredients for the Biryani rice are:

3 cups Basmati rice, washed, and soaked in water for 30 minutes, drained in a colander
One and half teaspoons shahi jeera/ black cumin
2 bay leaves
2 black + 2 green cardamoms
1 stick of cinnamon
Half teaspoon grated nutmeg
Half tablespoon desi ghee
Salt

Heat water in a big saucepan. Add the whole spices – shahi jeera, bay leaves, cardamoms, cinnamon, nutmeg, ghee and salt.

Boil the water with the spices for about 5-7 minutes and then add the rice. The idea is to extract the fragrance from the spices and infuse it with our rice. The rice takes very little time to cook. Make sure you are stirring it and watching over it all the time. Check a few grains to see if its done. Drain in a colander and keep aside.

Since a pakki biryani is typically layered, we will ready the ingredients ahead in time and not wait till the meat and rice is done. The essential item for layering any biryani is – crispy fried slivers of red onion. Some biryanis also have boiled potatoes and eggs in between. I did not want to use eggs in this Biryani today, but since I did have a few baby potatoes, I thought they’d go well.

Ingredients for Layering are:

2 medium size red onions, very thinly sliced
1 or 2 potatoes, boiled and peeled
Fresh mint leaves, torn
Saffron strands, soaked in warm water
Few drops of Kewra essence
Oil for frying the onions

Slice the onions and deep fry them in hot oil to get a caramelized color on them, remove with slotted spoon.

I boiled the baby potatoes, peeled and fried them for a couple of minutes in the same oil the onions were fried.

The layering of the biryani is the most interesting part of the post-cooking phase.

The thumb rule to layering in pakki biryani is that the base and the top layers always have to be rice.

Here is the sequence I follow for my pakki biryani – rice, meat (without any of its gravy), fried onions, potatoes, mint leaves, little drizzle of saffron and kewra, and then rice again. Complete the layering when you have used all the meat and rice. Remember to garnish with mint leaves and fried onions and saffron and drops of kewra on the top.

Save the gravy to be served with the biryani later.

Keep covered. You can heat the biryani vessel on your stove top by place a pan or a tava at the bottom, so that the base of the vessel does not come in direct contact with heat. If the bowl is microwaveable, you can of course microwave!

I am sending my Mutton Biryani to Michael Lee West’s Foodie Friday.

Raan Sikander Raan

No, nobody called Sikander is being chased by a screaming Bengali. In fact, its is the name of the new lamb recipe I attempted today.

Sikandari Raan (Marinated Whole Leg of Spring Lamb) is one of the signature lamb dishes of the Bukhara Restaurant in ITC Maurya. Though their Dal Bukhara (Creamy Black Lentil) and Murgh Malai Kebab (Creamy Chicken Kebab) are undoubtedly the most popular from their spread. Ask Clinton. No, not Hillary. The other one.
Like most of Bukhara’s dishes, Sikandari Raan is inspired by the traditions of the Northwestern frontier. Its the sheer scope and scale of this cuisine (essentially a mix of Afghan, Indian, Iranian, Pakistani, Central Asian and Middle Eastern) that makes it so inventive in its flavors.

Sikandari Raan is the sort of thing your kitchen can become famous for. And I am still craving for some fame. Maybe this time…

I traveled downtown to my butcher to get a leg of Spring Lamb. Supermarkets don’t do it for me, especially when I am making something so traditional. The leg of lamb I bought was about a kilo in weight. My butcher, a very affectionate lady at the Kensington Market suggested I take the front leg slash shoulder which has better marbling than the hind legs. She also cracked the bone at couple of places just so my marinade worked better. I knew she was right and let her.
At home, I scored the meat deep enough to reach the center bone from both sides. My butcher had already trimmed the extra fat.

So here I am now, introducing to you the ingredients and process of making Sikandari Raan!

1 leg of Spring Lamb (about one kilogram)
One and a half teaspoon ginger paste
One and a half teaspoon garlic paste
Juice of one lemon
Half cup white rum
Half cup vinegar
Half teaspoon mace (javitri) powder
One teaspoon black pepper powder
Half teaspoon cardamom powder
Two teaspoons red chili powder
Vegetable oil for basting
Chaat Masala
Salt

Make a dry rub with red chili powder, mace powder, black pepper powder and salt. Rub it all over the lamb making sure it reaches the insides through the scoring you have already done. Now mix the juice of one lemon and the ginger-garlic paste. With the back of a spoon or a butter knife, spread this mixture all over the lamb. Its important you do the dry rub first and then the wet marinade so that the flavors infuse better. I let the lamb marinate in my fridge overnight.
I don’t like drinking rum, but I’d definitely like to eat it. That’s one of the two more ingredients I added next to my marinating leg. Half cup of white rum and half cup of vinegar to drench the lamb. I let the lamb stand outside for four-five hours before it went in the oven.
Preheat the oven to 350°F. Cook the lamb for an hour turning at least two to three times. The Holy Grail for any barbequing or grilling is moisture. The rum and vinegar are the key ingredients which keep the meat from turning dry. Once you see that the liquids have cooked in the baking dish, baste the lamb with oil, and roast again for 30 minutes or till the meat is done.
You can sprinkle some chaat masala and serve the Sikandari Raan with onion rings and lemon wedges.
I love the way the recipe does not confuse or overpower the meat with too many spices. Its kept at a minimum on the ingredients quotient and maximum when it comes to taste!

I served the Sikandari Raan with some jalapeño peppers stuffed with feta cheese, a couple of butter-broiled corn on the cobs, and little heads of broccoli and carrot sticks with some spinach and chipotle dip.
As for my Sikander (its actually the Hindi name for Alexander the Great), he was already eyeing the leftovers for lunch tomorrow, while I treated myself with some chocolate-filled cannolis. And we both ate happily ever after…