One fine afternoon my elder son returned and excited announced that he just had very sumptous home-made curry briyani at his colleague's Hari Raya open house. Knowing my family's appetite for flavourful and spicy cuisine, I urged my son to ask his colleague for the recipe. However I did not hold high hopes as he said that his colleague's wife had gotten the recipe from a paid cooking course.
A few days later, a nicely printed recipe was placed on my kitchen table. Finally! I grabbed the ingredients and blended them into a yummy, thick and aromatic curry.
My family tasted it and commented it was alright, but lacking the distinctive 'oomph' of a Asian curry. It was good enough, though, and we similarly devoured the curry with lots of steaming white rice. As the portion was quite large, half of it was kept and saved for the next day. Eureka! We discovered the secret to enhanced curry flavour was to keep it overnight. Here you go, a mean dish of spicy, relishing and mesmerizing Indian-styled briyani.
Recipe:
Ingredients A:- All to be blended/ground
1 kg meat (mutton/beef/chicken) - if use chicken, need to fry half cook.
4 red shallots
5 green chillies
5 red chillies
5 cm ginger
5 cloves garlic
Ingredients B:-
1 small can tomato puree (the smallest can)
1 cup tomato sos
1 tablespoon curry spices (for meat)
2 tablespoon briyani spices
2 tablespoon kurma spices (optional)
Method: Mix ingredients A and B together.
Ingredients C:-
1/2 cup yogurt, fresh milk or evaporated milk
10 almonds (optional)
10 cashew nuts (optional)
Method:- blend ingredients B together (if you are using almonds and cashew nuts).
Ingredients D:-
2 red small onions (slice/cut)
1 stalk of mint (pudina) leaves
3 stalk of coriander leave
1 stalk lemon grass
4 fresh tomatoes (cut each tomato into 4 halves)
some cooking oil
salt
potato and carrot (optional)
Method to cook curry:
1) Cut meat into small pieces,
2) Heat up ghee or cooking oil, add in lemon grass,sliced onions and fry till fragrance.
3) Pour in ingredients A and B, stir-fry till spices are well cooked.
4) Add in the meat, corinader leaves, mint leaves, fresh tomatoes and salt.
5) When meat is half cooked, add in ingredients C, also add in potato and carrot if you like.
6) Cook till meat is tender and gravy has thickened (stir-occasionally to avoid being burnt).
Served hot with rice.
