The Biryani
Biryani is the quintessential dish of the Indian subcontinent, and there are as many different variations as there are communities that eat it. At its most elemental it consists of two ingredients and two cooking techniques. Rice and some kind of meat/vegetables/cheese/something are prepared separately, and then sealed in a pot with dough and cooked together. That’s about it, and although it is extremely modest in its most basic forms, it is a dish that can be elevated to the royal dinner table.
Why, then, is the biryani a relative unknown to the American palate? Simple. We kind of suck. We want our Indian food the same way we get our crappy Chinese takeout: a pile of rice, and an absurdly disproportionate pile of bite-sized meat chunks in some sort of tasty gravy. That way we can pretend the rice is a side dish and barely eat any of it while we consume the meat and sauce in piggish silence, or vegetables covered in 11,000 calories worth of sweet sauce and enough MSG to give a Clydesdale a stroke because we’re trying to convince ourselves that the mere fact that they are vegetables means we are eating healthy.
This is all extremely unfortunate for everyone involved. When well made, a biryani is a kaleidoscope of subtly varying flavors that mirrors the every-bite-is-different philosophy of the Italians, and it's not absurdly unhealthy. Jasmine or Basmati rice becomes a princess perfumed with cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, saffron and mace. Mint and coriander leaf contribute verdant aromatics that plays off the sweetness of brown onion and ginger. Meat and vegetables caramelize on the bottom of the dough-sealed pan during dum cooking (dum = the cooking technique and the pan), adding their juices to the yogurt, ghee and chili marinade that echo the spicy northern curries, which brings balance to the fresh tropical ingredients typical of southern cuisine.
For me, this recipe was the first time I found something in Indian food that was revelatory in scope, conception and flavor. It is the opposite of the Indian food we are used to that is homogenous from start to finish, and infinitely superior.
So how to cook it? If you’re going to make it, it’s worth doing right start to finish. Every ingredient matters because at some point when you’re eating it you will taste them all coming forward. Therefore, we toast and grind our own garam masala.
Note: There is a cooking summary at the end so can get to cooking and don't have to read this more than once if you don't want to.
The Garam Masala
It’s a bit difficult to suggest we should dry roast our own spice mix in the current food climate without sounding like a kept douchebag with a lot of spare time, but really—it’s not that big a deal. Obviously it looks like a ton of ingredients and a whole shit ton of pain in the ass, but is it worth it? Yes, and I’ll make the case without resorting to bloviations about how much more delicious it makes your food. This is America. Our entire food history is centered around the concept that “easy” is a seasoning agent.
The second best reason to make your own garam masala is that you sound superior to your friends when you casually insert the fact you made it into conversation as if you hadn’t been looking for an opening the whole time, but the first is that you will know exactly what’s in it and in what proportion. That's not some hippie natural food bullshit that treats "healthy" like a seasoning agent either. Unlike hippie food, Indian food only draws one's attention to one's butt if the food is too spicy.
A lot of Indian food tastes similar to inexperienced taste buds because the subtleties exist in the context of strong flavors. It would be like trying to tell the difference between shades of red in extremely bright light before your eyes can adjust. However, this is no excuse for buying curry powder and throwing it into a bowl of mayo and yogurt, and besides, curry powder is just a variation on garam masala anyway. Ever wonder why curry powder always sucks for making actual chicken curry instead of just curry chicken salad? Because curry powder is mostly cumin and turmeric which make for a pretty bland curry, and the minute supporting spices are usually band-aids for bad Indian cooking like ginger powder.
In short, the best way to gain an understanding of what Indian cooking is to make garam masala at least once. It's a fragrant genie that inspires hours of daydreaming and reading about spices (See: Appendix at the end) that are gathered from Europe to the Spice Islands in Southeast Asia, including fruits, leaves, seeds, bark and even flowers. You might as well make it since you are already putting in the effort to make a dish that will get the most out of it. So here’s the recipe. You can leave out some of the ingredients at the bottom and it will be perfectly acceptable, but you have to use everything else or it isn’t anywhere near as good.
Put in pan, dry roast on low, grind, pass through sieve.
Coriander Seeds (Dhania)– ½ c
Cumin Seeds (Jeera)– ¼ c.
Green Cardamom Pods (Elaichi) – 25
Cloves (Laung) – 15
Cinnamon Stick (Dalchini) – 2 inch stick, broken
Star Anise (Chakra Phool) – 2
Fennel Seeds (Saunf, Moti) – 1 Tbsp
Black Peppercorns (Goal Mirch, Kali) – 1 tsp
Indian Bay Leaves (Tejpat) – 6 (Use regular Bay Leaves unless you can find Indian Bay Leaves)
Black Cardamom (Elaichi, bari) – 10 (If you don’t have, add 8 extra green cardamom)
Mace (Javitri) – 6 (Optional)
Brown Onions
Brown onions are the most overlooked ingredient in Indian cooking. At least by Westerners. You cannot make this without brown onions any more than you can make a loaf of French bread without wheat flour. If you don’t add them, it’s not a biryani. It would be as annoying as being invited over for Boeuf Bourguignon and then getting a vegetarian substitute with eggplant or some other dumb shit because the host's personal insecurities and self-centered outlook on life drove them to the belief that whatever nonsense they invented with their therapist to excuse them from addressing their issues in an adult fashion would be easier to rationalize in the wee hours of the morning if everyone else had to do it too. And they may be right about that...
Anyway.
Thinly slice an onion, heat a bottle of vegetable oil to 350 degrees and fry until they turn brown. Did you take the oil out of the bottle? I sure hope so. I'm trying to keep these recipes short and to the point.
The Marinade
This is another part that is tricky for some people, because some people were born without hands and can’t afford pirate hooks. Otherwise it’s absurdly simple. Take everything, shove it in a bowl and let it sit around for 30 minutes to get delicious. Also, there is no reason this has to be chicken – it’s just a very standard ingredient. You can use Paneer (the 1 – 1.25 lbs. is enough if you make it), a bunch of vegetables, some other meat or a combination of whatever. It’s not going to taste bad because the gravy is delicious.
Put everything in a bowl, mix, and rest for 30 min.
Whole Chicken - breasts cut into two pieces each. (Or 2 lbs. of something or somethings else. For Paneer (fresh Indian cheese), see recipe below. Seriously. It's really good in this.)
Ginger Garlic Paste – 2 Tbsp
Red Chili Powder – 1 Tbsp
Salt – 2 tsp
Yogurt – 1 c
Garam Masala Powder – 1 tsp
Green Cardamom Powder – 1 tsp (If you have a mortar and pestle, don't waste your time scraping coffee or garam masala out of the grinder with a handful of toilet paper. Seriously, it's nothing compared to the forearm pain of whipping egg whites with a whisk...)
Brown Onions – 1 c
Ghee – 4 Tbsp
Coriander Leaves – 2 Tbsp, chopped
Mint Leaves – 2 Tbsp, chopped
Green Chillis – 2, broken
Lemon Juice – 1 lemon
Turmeric – 1 tsp
Put a punch of saffron in a little milk to infuse. This doesn't go in the marinade, but if I don't tell you to do it now you will hate me later when it comes up.
Paneer, If You Want It
99% of the time when people tell you making your own cheese is easy and isn't messy they are full of crap. This is the exception, and you don't even need a thermometer.
Nearly boil milk while stirring, remove and stir in vinegar. Let sit for 10 minutes, pour curd in cheesecloth, squeeze out some liquid. Make into a disc in the cheesecloth, put a plate over the top and weight down with a few cans for 1 hr.
Gallon of Milk - low temperature pasteurized whole milk. (Anything but regular “pasteurized” milk Check at some crunchy hippie grocery store like Natural Grocers.)
White Vinegar - ½ c
Salt - 1 tsp
Cheesecloth
The Rice
During the marinating, boil the rice with a little pouch of spices until the rice is ¾ cooked.
Pouch
Black Cardamom – 3
Green Cardamom – 6
Cloves – 6
Pepper – 6
Bay Leaf – 2
Cinnamon Stick – 1.5 inch
In the Water
Carroway Seeds – 1 tsp
Salt – 2 tbsp
Rice – 1.5 c.,
Final Assembly
Put the marinade in the bottom of a pot, and layer it like this. Really, all you have to keep in mind is that you are putting in big pinches of stuff, not bombing the pot. Personally, I don't really measure these, and it's more on the first layer and less on the second one.
Put half the rice on top, and sprinkle with:
Coriander – 1 Tbsp
Mint Leaves – 1 Tbsp
Brown Onions – 2 Tbsp
Garam Masala Powder – ¼ tsp
Green Cardamom Powder – 1 tsp
Add a few tablespoons of the rice water to keep it moist
Rest of rice on chicken:
Brown Onions – 1 Tbsp
Garam Masala – ¼ tsp
Green Cardamom Powder – ¼ tsp
Saffron Milk – 2 Tbsp milk + 1 big pinch Saffron
Ghee – 5 Tbsp
Add a few tablespoons of the rice water to keep it moist
Dough Seal
Make a dough with 1 part water and 3 parts flour or thereabouts to seal the pan. Roll into a snake and put around the rim of the pot. Stick on the lid.
Cook
This is dum cooking at its finest. Even today, the traditional method of burying food in the ground with hot coals for a few hours or sealing a pot with dough over a fire is commonplace, and it produces excellent results. This is how ancient cultures cook, and that's been the process for all of this. Grind and toast your own spices, combine everything in a pot, seal with dough, and put over the fire until it's done. You can even cook it over the fire if you want, and you can adjust the heat by raising or lowering the pot over the fire either with bricks, or adjusting the height of the fuel layer.
Medium heat, 15 min. (Look for steam coming out of the dough seal). Reduce to simmer/low, 6 minutes.
Serve
There are two ways to serve this: my way, and the way I am asked to serve it because some people in the house want to see something green and squishy on the plate regardless of how it tastes. Given that I often leave a trail of dishes all over the kitchen, compromises sometimes have to be made. Finally, try eating it with your hands. That's not only traditional, but there's something licking fingers and nabbing delectable little morsels of food that's really fun. Sometimes I feel like Indian food doesn't taste right with a fork.
Method 1 (The correct method, also known as "mine".) Spoon onto a serving dish, but DO NOT mix this all together. You want to see mostly rice on top with an occasional overturned pile of stuff showing through. It's a little like cracking the yolk of a poached egg just as you are sending out the Salade Lyonnaise— you want it to look pretty and mix together just a bit, but still look like a whole egg.
Method 2 (The "annoying" method) Chop up a whole head of kale and sauté. Place around the serving tray and put the biryani on top. Note: when you serve this, make sure you throw in some sideways and unnecessary comments about how pointless it is, and imply that certain people might need to see a psychologist concerning their irrational opinions about what makes food taste good. Also, it is perfectly acceptable to be kind of a dick by intentionally not seasoning the kale so it appears a much more grave offense to the dish than it actually need be. This technique of conflating a bad dish and bad cooking to spearhead changes in household culinary policy has many, many applications in the home kitchen.
Cooking Summary
Make the brown onions, then make the marinade. While that's sitting, make the dough seal, soak the saffron, and make the rice so when it's done the marinade is ready. Layer, seal, cook 15 minutes, then reduce to simmer/low for 6. Eat.
Preliminaries
1. Make Paneer if you want it.
2. Make Garam Masala if you want to.
3. Make Brown Onions
THE MARINADE
Put everything in a bowl, mix, and rest for 30 min.
Main Ingredient - 1.5-2 lbs., cut into manageable chunks.
Ginger Garlic Paste – 2 Tbsp
Red Chili Powder – 1 Tbsp
Salt – 2 tsp
Yogurt – 1 c
Garam Masala Powder – 1 tsp
Green Cardamom Powder – 1 tsp
Brown Onions – 1 c
Ghee – 4 Tbsp
Coriander Leaves – 2 Tbsp, chopped
Mint Leaves – 2 Tbsp, chopped
Green Chillis – 2, broken
Lemon Juice – 1 lemon
Turmeric – 1 tsp
*While this is marinating, make the rice, the dough seal, and soak the saffron.*
THE RICE
Boil the rice with a little pouch of spices until the rice is ¾ cooked.
Pouch
Black Cardamom – 3
Green Cardamom – 6
Cloves – 6
Pepper – 6
Bay Leaf – 2
Cinnamon Stick – 1.5 inch
In the Water
Carroway Seeds – 1 tsp
Salt – 2 tbsp
Rice – 1.5 c.
Assembly and Cooking
Layer the rice with spices, seal pot with dough, cook on medium for 15 minutes, then reduce to simmer/low and cook 6 minutes. Serve on a plate with only a little mixing of the rice and marinade, and consume at great speed.
Put half the rice on top, and sprinkle with:
Coriander – 1 Tbsp
Mint Leaves – 1 Tbsp
Brown Onions – 2 Tbsp
Garam Masala Powder – ¼ tsp
Green Cardamom Powder – 1 tsp
Add a few tablespoons of the rice water to keep it moist
Rest of rice on chicken:
Brown Onions – 1 Tbsp
Garam Masala – ¼ tsp
Green Cardamom Powder – ¼ tsp
Saffron Milk – 2 Tbsp milk + 1 big pinch Saffron
Ghee – 5 Tbsp
Add a few tablespoons of the rice water to keep it moist
Appendix: The Spices!
Coriander Seeds (Dhania)
First off, coriander seeds aren’t seeds – they are the tiny dried fruit of the coriander plant (cilantro, in Spanish). An ancient spice, it was widely used across the known world in antiquity, and a handful of coriander was found in the tomb of Tutankhamun. The Mycenean Greeks (~1450 B.C.E.) provide the first known written example of the spice on several clay tablets that contain the word “koriyadono”. It likely arrived on the Indian subcontinent with the ancient Persians, and was widely used across Europe and Asia in both cooking and as a medicine. Paul of Aegina (7th C.E.) describes it in his Epitomes Iatrikes Biblio Hepta (Medical Compendium in Seven Books) as being used in medicine since Hippocrates, and the “Arabians say when the juice is taken to the extent of four ounces, it proves destructive to life”. These days, people ascribe a wide assortment of anecdotal medicinal properties to coriander, including the power to increase the flow of breast milk and treating measles.
Coriander is used extremely commonly in Indian cuisine throughout the subcontinent, and is used more heavily – often in both whole and ground forms -- in the northwest regions near Pakistan.
Cumin Seeds (Jeera)
Cumin is at least as old as coriander, and was used in mummification by the Egyptians. It is mentioned in both the Old and New Testaments of the Bible (Isaiah and Matthew). It was probably first cultivated in Iraq, and, along with Coriander, is one of the most common spices throughout India. It has been said to have all sorts of valuable medical properties like preventing blood clots and stopping diabetes, but in most instances these studies are total nonsense. Cumin was said to aid in marital fidelity, and during the Middle Ages it was common in Europe for couples to have a sachet of cumin on them as they walked down the aisle. In the traditional Indian Vedic marriage ritual, cumin features prominently during the Muhurtham – the central moment of the ceremony. At the astrologically divined time, the couple has a paste of cumin and brown sugar smeared on their forehead, symbolizing the balance and blending of bitter and sweet in their life together.
Food-wise, cumin has been eaten by just about everybody for just about as long as they’ve had their fingertips on it. It’s a fantastic spice, and along with coriander, red chili powder, garlic, ginger and turmeric, a foundational part of Indian cuisine from Rogan Josh in Kashmir to Sambar in Kerala.
Green Cardamom Pods (Elaichi)
Green Cardamom is India’s great spice contribution to the world. Native to the subcontinent and Southeast Asia, it is the most expensive spice behind saffron and vanilla pods, and mercifully requires small amounts. Cardamom is generally left in the bright green pods because it’s the best way to keep the tiny black seeds fresh and in good condition. Cardamom doesn’t quite have the Egyptian lineage of Cumin and Coriander, but it also appears in ancient Mycanean texts as well as the Historia Plantarum (History of Botany) by Theophrastus (~300 B.C.E.) Today, the majority of cardamom comes from Guatemala, but India is still the second-largest producer.
From a culinary perspective, cardamom is the taste of India and Southeast Asia. Although somewhat less pervasive that Coriander and Cumin, it is more diverse, in that it finds a home in drinks, candies, cocktails and a whole host of other food products and cosmetics, in addition to a laundry list of dishes.
Black Cardamom (Elaichi, bari)
Black cardamom is often used in conjunction with Green cardamom, or in dishes in which a more savory and subtle cardamom flavor is wanted. While nowhere near as common as its emerald cousin, it is certainly neither uncommon nor anywhere near as expensive. It features much more prominently in northern Indian cuisine, and is largely cultivated in Nepal.
Bay Leaves (Tejpat)
Bay leaves are by far the most recognizable and common ingredient on this list with the possible exception of cinnamon and the definite exception of black pepper, and ironically are most unfortunately named for the fledgling Indian cook. These are Indian bay leaves, and are somewhat different from the European variety that grown with complete abandon all over Southern California and Italy. The name – Cinnamomum tamala – gives away the key difference in flavor from the familiar chicken soup additive. However, when it comes to making a garam masala, it’s not the end of the world to use the commonly available bay leaves. In fact, there are probably multiple spices on this list you will end up omitting out of sheer unavailability and prohibitive price.
Cloves (Laung)
Cloves are the only spice on this list that is a flower, and for millennia they grew exclusively on the Spice Islands in Indonesia. As a result of this relative isolation, cloves were not traded amongst European Antiquity. The Chinese made extensive use of cloves – notably as a breath-freshener – and Arabic traders brought them to the Islamic world where they have been discovered in ancient Syrian pots from as early as 1700 B.C.E. According to tradition, a Frenchman named Pierre Poivre was the first person to steal clove seeds and plant them elsewhere, and it is of charming coincidence that poivre is French for “pepper”, another garam masala spice.
Cloves appear in many Indian dishes, but with nowhere near the frequency as the aforementioned spices owing to their strong and very distinct sweet, smoky floral taste.
Mace (Javitri)
By all rights, mace should be the most expensive and rare spice on the list given that, until the mid-1800’s, mace could only be found on the otherwise-insignificant Banda Island in the Spice Islands. The Dutch traders managed to keep the location of the Spice Islands hidden for years, thereby cornering the market. It is said that nutmeg was described by Pliny the Elder in the first century C.E., but given the available text it’s as speculative as granting nutmeg as Galen’s Chrysobalanos, or “Golden Nut”. Arabian traders positively identified it as Jausiband, or “Nut of Banda”, but it wasn’t until well into the late Middle Ages that mace and nutmeg were universally recognized in the spice pantheon.
Mace is the bright red covering of nutmeg, which is itself a seed. As the fruits ripen, they split and reveal the mace which – presumably – attracts animals. Except dogs, that is. While there are no indigenous dogs on Banda to speak of, if they did live there they would have probably all died of epilepsy by now as nutmeg is poisonous to canines. When buying mace it is important to recognize that it is used extremely sparingly in western cooking, usually popping up in the occasional mulled wine recipe or spiced dessert. It is more expensive than nutmeg, and depending on location can be quite difficult to find in blade form (unground).
Cinnamon Stick (Dalchini)
Despite being the most universally identifiable spice on the list (except black pepper, of course), there is a chance you have never actually tasted cinnamon. The genuine article is a wonderfully fragrant bark of the cinnamon tree instead of the vastly more common and cheaper cassia bark. In antiquity, cinnamon was found in Southeast Asia and, importantly, along the southwest coast of India known as the Malabar Coast. Of all the spices on this list, cinnamon is as good a candidate as any for being the oldest traded spice. The Egyptians used it, as did pretty much everyone else in the known universe who could get their hands on it. The Portugese figured out the Sri Lanka was where most of the world’s cinnamon was in the 1500’s, conquered a local kingdom, and enslaved the populace to monopolize the cinnamon trade. For as horrible as they were, the one upside to Portuguese involvement in world trade was the introduction of the chili peppers from the New World to Asian and Indian cuisine.
Star Anise (Chakra Phool)
Star Anise turns up irregularly in western cuisine, but when it is called for it is indispensable. A fruit of a coniferous Indochinese tree, it is most widely useful to the inhabitants of Earth as the source of shikimic acid, a vital component of Tamiflu. Historically, star anise has by far and away found its most common culinary home in Asian kitchens owing to the much more readily available fennel seeds which are similar in flavor, but still appears now and again in western dishes requiring spices along the lines of cloves and cinnamon.
Fennel Seeds (Saunf, Moti)
Fennel seeds have the least interesting history of any spice on this list. Fennel grows all over the place, and some of the most famous comes from Florence. Fennel can be found in all kinds of cooking across Asia and Europe, and it’s the most Mediterranean of everything on the list. The most obvious place people eat fennel seeds in Indian cookery is on the way out of a restaurant when they grab a handful of candied fennel seeds from a dish that serves as an after dinner mint.
Black Peppercorns (Goal Mirch, Kali)
Black pepper grows on the Malabar Coast in Kerala, and until Vasco de Gama figured out how to get to India by sea the Arabian spice traders dominated the market. The phrase “peppercorn rent” arose because pepper was so expensive for Europeans that a little bit of it was worth enough to pay your rent, and the money to be made linking India and Europe for pepper was one of the primary reasons Columbus thought his little excursion could turn a profit.