Bombay Chicken Biryani - Farouq

A few weeks ago, Adnan offered me a position as co-editor for his blog; being a foodie / food lover, I willingly accepted his offer not knowing what I was getting myself into. Hahahhaha. While juggling work and school, I managed to cook Bombay Biryani on a Saturday morning within a short period of time, it actually took me less than an hour and half to cook a tasty biryani. This isn’t my first attempt therefore not many mistakes took place in this endeavour of mine. Please also take note that I improvised here and there to make up for lack of ingredients.

I was introduced to biryani at a very young age (like many Malays). The Johor Biryani or rather Beriani Johor is very much popular because it is known to be very rich and tasty. Beriani Johor is classified into a few categories such as Beriani Muar*, Beriani Gam, Beriani Dam and many more. I’ve also tried the Bengali Biryani, South Indian Biryani and also the normal Desi Biryani. I’ve yet to try the Lankan Biryani, haven’t had the opportunity, but soon inshaAllah.

Unlike Adnan I grew up here (Malaysia) and America (but my love for food knows no boundries), therefore the meals I make aren’t usually authentic neither conventional; because the ingredients I’d add into my cooking would be a mix of Malay and American spices. So please don’t feel offended if I add shrimp paste or rosemary into this biryani, hahahhaha. Plus everything has to be spicy, well almost everything, the spicier the better, that’s my motto.

To make this delicious dish, you would need the following ingredients:

1. Chicken Biryani:

- 4 pieces of chicken breast cut into small pieces

- Some onions (depends on the size really, because if it is really big than 1 would be enough)

- Oil (please use either vegetable or olive oil, don’t yall use that nasty palm oil ok)

- Tomatoes (4 to 5 cut into cubes)

- Green Chillies

- Ginger

- Garam masala

- Chilli Powder

- Paprika

- Turmeric Powder

- Coriander Powder

- Kurma Powder

- Times

- Fresh Cilantro

- Fresh Oregano

- Salt

Pour the oil into a pot, heat it up until it becomes reasonably hot. Then dump in the onions into the pot. Sauté the onions until they become golden brown. After you get the onions to turn golden brown, you will get this amazing aroma of cooked onions; that is the cue for you to put in your tomatoes. Leave your tomatoes to cook for approximately 4 minutes. After that, dump in your chicken breasts along with the abovementioned spices namely garam masala, chilli powder, paprika, turmeric powder, coriander powder, kurma powder, times, salt and also green chillies. Leave them to cook for about 8 minutes. Once chicken is cooked, turn off the heat and put in fresh cilantro and oregano.

Voila chicken briyani ready!!! Well not really!!!

2. Biryani Rice:

- Rice

- Turmeric Powder

- Salt

- Cloves and Cardamoms (as much as you like J)

- Tomato Puree

- Olive oil

Since this isn’t the conventional biryani, you can just cook it in a rice cooker. The conventional way on the other hand would require you to boil the rice until it became half- cooked; you would then pop the half-cooked rice placed on top of the chicken biryani into the oven to be cooked all the way through (I’ve tried this a few times and the rice wasn’t cooked all the way through). The non-conventional way however would only require you to dump in all the above said ingredients into a rice cooker. You might wonder, why put in turmeric powder and tomato puree, well the answer is simple, I couldn’t find any saffron, so I improvised by replacing with turmeric powder for color and tomato puree for flavor.

After the rice is cooked, mix it with the chicken biryani, and for presentation sake, put some fresh cilantro along with fresh oregano into the biryani. If you have mint leaves, cut them up into small pieces and dump it in the rice for more flavour, and of course it’ll give the biryani more color.

There you have it, your Bombay Biryani.