Chicken Dum Biryani | Kerala Style | Guest Post

      Chicken Dum Biryani -This wonderful recipe comes as a guest post from a blogger friend of mine.She is so bubbly, a cheerful mother of 2 cute angels ,love to spend her time with friends,help friends,talks her mind,love to bake,love to leave encouraging comments.You can feel her positive energy when you hear her(even in chats and messages).Friends are really precious, while we move we get to know different friends we miss some .But this friend, i never want to miss.She got many wonderful qualities especially i got to learn organisation and planning.Without much puzzling i introduce our chief guest of today Rafee who blogs at bigsweettooth.

      Like i told in my guest post to her,She has so many wonderful bakes,non-veg,kerala,easy recipes in her blog. If you haven't yet there then you sure have to.
    Requested her some non-veg recipe as a guest post.MyKitchenOdyssey Readers are also looking forward for a chicken recipe?.Lets hear from her.

    It is always a pleasure to be doing guest posts as far as I am concerned. For me, it is like as though I am invited by my blogger friend to her house for a chai party and I so happily cook up something and carry it with me to feed them. Unfortunately, on the blog front, we are only able to give them a visual treat of what we prepare!

        First of all, I would like to apologise to Sathya for procrastinating over her invitation for a guest post. She had asked me for one quite some time ago, but I had asked her to give me some time till I settle into my new kitchen. It has been more than 3 months since I moved in, but I still feel that I am yet to really sink in. Since Sathya’s blog is about pure vegetarian delicacies, I was thinking about giving her some simple recipe but then she came up requesting me for a chicken recipe. I was shocked at first, “Sathya, isn’t your blog vegetarian?” That is when she posted an updated picture of her ChettinadChicken Curry. She assured me that she is primarily vegetarian, who cooks once in a blue moon for her folks when they request for non-vegetarian. She assured me that her request was a well thought-of one, and here I am with a chicken recipe like she wanted!

Before moving forward, a short introduction to the lovely readers at Kitchen Odyssey. My name is Rafeeda, and I blog at “The Big Sweet Tooth”.  Just like my blog name, I adore sweets and chocolates and love to bake cakes! I would have given her a sweet dish had she given me the choice, but since she requested for a chicken recipe, I decided to make and present her with something that I absolutely adore – BIRIYANI!

I have a home where the men and the kids alike need biriyani or anything non-veg with basmati rice on Friday afternoon. After all it’s weekend, and it has been the norm at home ever since my parents have been there. They have now gone back and settled, but that does not change anything as far as routine is concerned. HD would happily gorge on it in the afternoon and night and B would pack for his tiffin for the next day without any complaints. Not to say anything about the kids – they are really fond of biriyani.

I have tried various type of biriyani's and my blog reflects a lot of them, but off late I have been repeating what I have tried before and have somehow not moved into unknown recipes. Since it has been long time since I have posted a new biriyani recipe, I thought this one – where chicken is cooked in a marinade of greens, of coriander, mint and green chillies and then put on dum with well cooked rice – would certainly be of interest to her. I decided to call it “Chicken Masala Biriyani” since it was quite apt for it. Many are scared to try out biriyani, but believe me it is easy, once you get the hang of it. Let’s soon jump into the recipe!

Chicken Masala Biriyani

Serves 4-6

Ingredients: 

• 1000 gm chicken, cut into medium sized pcs
• 1 tbsp oil
• 1 large onion, thinly sliced
• 1 large tomato, chopped. 

For grinding:

• 4 tbsp yogurt
• 3 green chillies
• l large ginger piece
• 6 cloves garlic
• 3 cloves
• 6 peppercorns
• 3 cardamoms
• 1 inch cinnamon
• 1 tsp cumin seeds
• 1/2 tsp fennel seeds
• 4 tbsp mint leaves, chopped
• 4 tbsp coriander leaves, chopped
• Salt to taste

For dum:

• 2 tbsp ghee
• 2 tbsp oil
• 1 large onion, sliced
• 10 cashews, slit
• 15-20 raisins
• 2 tbsp mint leaves, chopped
• 2 tbsp coriander leaves, chopped
• 2 tsp garam masala powder
• 2 tbsp rose water

For rice:

• 3 cups basmati rice
• 1 ltr water
• Whole spices as required (bay leaf, cinnamon, star anise, cardamom, peppercorn) 

Method:

Let us go step by step. 

First of all, wash chicken pieces properly, pat them dry. Grind all the ingredients under “for grinding” section into a smooth paste. Put into the chicken and mix well. Marinate the chicken for at least one hour. The best would be to keep it overnight. If keeping overnight, leave it in the fridge and then bring it back to normal temperature before cooking.

Wash and soak the rice for 30 minutes. Drain and set aside.

In a pressure cooker, heat oil. Saute the onion till soft. Then add the tomatoes and cook till mashed. Now add the chicken along with its marinade. Check the salt. Close the lid and cook for one whistle on high. Switch off and allow the pressure to go by itself.

Meanwhile, let us cook the rice. Heat water along with the whole masala's till it comes to a rolling boil. Add the drained rice and salt and allow it to boil again. Now reduce the flame to the minimum and leave it untouched with a closed lid for 10-15 minutes till the water is totally evaporated and the rice is 90% cooked. Fluff it up and set aside.

In a frying pan, heat the oil and ghee. Fry the onion till brown. Set aside on a paper towel. Fry the cashew nuts, puff up the raisins. Drain and keep along with the fried onion.

Now let’s start the dum process. Heat a chapathi tawa till it becomes hot and keep it on low flame. In a deep saucepan, put in the chicken masala. Sprinkle half of the dum ingredients - fried onion, cashew, raisins, coriander and mint leaves and garam masala powder. Put all the rice on top. Sprinkle the rest of the dum ingredients. Now drizzle the fried oil-ghee and the rose water on top. Tightly cover with aluminium foil on the top and close the lid. Keep on top of the hot chapathi tawa and keep the flame on high for 5 minutes. Lower to minimum and then leave it on for 15-20 minutes. Switch off and allow the rice to rest for another 10 minutes. (To see step by step procedure on how to put biryani on dum, you may refer to this post.)

Take off the lid and the foil. Mix with soft hands, using a ladle with a long handle to mix the rice and masala. Serve warm with some raita, pickle and papad!

I hope all of you enjoyed the recipe. I would like to thank Sathya for being my lovely host and having me around here. Wishing her all the very best in her blogging journey… 

Thanks so much for the wonderful guest post Rafee.Hope you guys enjoyed reading this post.My tummy is asking for some biryani now.I better go make some.Try to make this weekend and send the feedback.