Chicken Tikka Biryani with a Madras sauce

[Mark J]

Sounds entirely feasible to me!

[curryqueen]

Hi all,

Yes biriyani does have sultanas and toasted almonds and is also made with curry gravy.  It is finally garnished with sliced boiled egg and sliced tomatoes.  Of course, if you can get hold of it also some edible silver paper too.  Traditionally it is also served with a vegetable curry/side dish!  I have a great recipe for it if anyone is interested.

[Yellow Fingers]

Hi curryqueen,

If your biryani recipe is restaurant style I would definitely be interested. I'm not looking for a traditional Biryani where you layer the meat with the rice and bake it in the oven, I am looking for the restaurant style quick stir fry with pilau rice and curry gravy. If you have the vegetable curry recipe I would like that though. Thanks.

[curryqueen]

Hi Yellow Fingers,  Sorry its's taken so long to come back.  Here is the restaurant recipe for Biryani!
prepared chicken tikka, 1 tablespoon cashew nuts(not salted ones) 1 tablespoon sultanas, 12oz uncooked basmati rice prepared, 20 fl oz gravy base, 1 tsp garam masala, 1 tsp chilli powder, 1/2 tsp salt, freshly chopped coriander.  For the garnish: 1 or 2 hard boiled eggs sliced or quartered and the same of sliced tomato.

Prep chicken tikka.  Put 2 to 3 tablespoons of oil into a pan a heat through, add cashew nuts and stir until golden brown.  Take out and drain.   Do the same with the sultanas until they plump out and drain.  Put chicken tikka pieces into the pan and stir fry for 2 minutes, add the cooked rice to chicken and cook for another 2 to 3 minutes until heated up thoroughly.  Bring gravy base to a boil and turn down to simmer.  Add garam masall, chilli powder, salt and stir well.  Cook on simmer for a couple of minutes more.  Pour gravy base over the rice and chicken and sprinkle over with cashews and sultanas.  Finally garnish with boiled egg and tomatoes.  Finally sprinkle over with chopped fresh coriander.   Hope this helps, it's delicious!  Let me know how you get on with it.  It's all to do with preparation.

[George]

OK this ones for yellowfingers, I finally got back to my friendly takeaway and ordered the above.
He used 2 pans to cook this one for the sauce, the other for the rice......

Mark

I'm several months late in noticing your message above, posted back in June. The index of recipes has proved useful.

Please confirm -  is your message a series of (very interesting) observations or an actual 'recipe' given to you, or at least talked through, by the chef? I know I found it impossible to ascertain what was going on when I watched a biryani being made, more recently.

Also, have you actually tried out the recipe and, if so, how close does it come to what your take-away actually serves as their Chicken Tikka Biryani?

Regards
George

[Mark J]

Hi George,

This was an observation, however the guy at my takeaway is very friendly and I can follow his recipes, if he adds something I'm not sure about or is too quick I ask him what he has done (he is cooking about 6 feet away from me in an open plan kitchen)

I haven't tried the recipe out because I'm not a biryani fan, I had this one because YF wanted a biryani recipe from a BIR, and unfortunately the end curry turned out to be decidedly average.

cheers

Mark

[George]

It's all part of our collective knowledge, in which you have been a major factor.

Mark

Thank you for you clarification. I agree with Pete (above): all information is useful and your reports are up there with the very best. I can't help wondering why the biryani which you saw didn't have any base sauce added to the rice, though. I'm sure most BIRs would use base sauce in a biryani. I'll report back once I've had a try (or two) at replicating a typical BIR chicken biryani.

Has YF or anyone else tried and succeeded at cooking a BIR-style chicken biryani yet, please?

If you compare a chicken biryani with a chicken tikka biryani, I would have expected it to be a case of using either pre-cooked chicken, or pre-baked chicken tikka, with all other elements of the dish remaining the same. But I may be wrong.

Regards
George

[Mark J]

Yes this one did seem totally unlike other BIRs, I wonder if it was because I asked for madras?

[DARTHPHALL]

I'm making my 15 Onion base as i type this !!!
I'm going to have a go at a Biryani as i had my first one about a month ago, i will omit the Chilli powder in the first stage so i can make some different Curries, Lasan Chicken is another I'm going to have a bash at. ;D might do a pic of the cooked Base ,i will post it in the 99.9% post .
DARTHPHALL.....

[Yellow Fingers]

Has YF or anyone else tried and succeeded at cooking a BIR-style chicken biryani yet, please?

I've definitely tried George, but alas no success yet. In principle it's easy. You heat up some curry base with your choice of meat, add some biryani masala, bung in a portion of cold pilau rice and stir fry until the curry sauce is absorbed by the rice. Then of course you can add raisins, almond slivers etc. and top with any combination of slices of tomato, cucumber and boiled egg to make it like your local version.

In practice, unsurprisingly, it's the biryani masala that's the problem as I just can't seem to get a blend that's right. In desperation I recently picked up a jar of biryani masala from Tesco and I'lll give that a go when I have time.

Mark's recipe is definitely not biryani, it's indian style fried rice. That's no insult to Mark, he'd never had biryani before so wasn't to know and I appreciated his effort in trying to get the recipe.