I've been trying to crack BIRyani for a long time now. I have tried recipes posted here, as well as other places, as well as from books. None of them have satisfied me.

As I was making a fresh batch of garam masala, I had a look at Kris Dhillon's biryani recipe and thought I'd give it a go.

I chopped up half a red onion and let it slowly cook down to a jammy consistency while the pilau rice cooked. I heated up a batch of The Curry Guy's base gravy with some garam masala, salt, and a little cayenne pepper.

I chopped up half a rotisserie chicken breast and put the pieces on top of the jammy onions. Pilau rice on top. Heat off, lid up, let it all steam for a couple of minutes. Fold the chicken and onion through the rice, top with some fried raisins, serve and spoon a little of the gravy on top.

Oh yeah, that's what I was looking for. A nice BIRyani. What I was looking for!

Quote from: livo on February 14, 2022, 09:30 PM
When I'm cooking curry, I no longer really smell it in the kitchen but my daughter came in the other day and told me she could smell it from her studio down in the shed. The shed is 50 metres from the house.

nasal fatigue is a real thing. If you want the full smell, and thus aroma, and thus "taste" experience, take 5 minutes to step outside before sitting down to eat your meal. This will allow the nasal fatigue to abate and you will get a much better "taste" experience.

(I am putting taste in scare quotes because what we think of as flavour is a synthesis of smell and taste. If your nose is tired of smelling the same thing, the flavour or "taste" will be much muted.)

amazing sounding menu there! Wow 

I went to our local Restaurant Depot a couple of days ago. There they have bags of Fajita veg mix. 10lbs cost me $25.

Why did I buy 10lbs of fajita mix? It's green and red bell peppers and onions, chopped into largeish chunks.

So I now have 13 bags of Balti aromatics in my freezer.

.. it would have been 15, but I had some nice bratwurst that was crying out to be paired with those guys 

Quote from: Robbo141 on February 01, 2022, 09:59 PM
Cheers bham but Jetro only serves businesses.  I'm a Costco member though and get our basmati in a huge sack from them. The rest is just local Indian grocers.  Slowly finding my feet here.

Robbo

The Restaurant Depot near me (Birmingham, AL) does not require any membership to shop there. I have one through a non profit I am associated with, but anyone can shop there.

Quote from: Robbo141 on January 29, 2022, 02:30 PM
I was very pleased to find a number of Indian grocers and restaurants in a town about 25 mins drive from me, in Naperville, IL.  Someone mentioned there's a place called the Mall of India, so I had a look online.  Says it has everything Indian, restaurants, food court, fashion, grocery etc.  I will be checking it out at some point.

Then I saw this.

https://nalarobotics.com/

Interesting...

Robbo

Robbo, if you have a Restaurant Depot (Jetro) near you, you might want to look at their prices. They aren't a one stop, but they stock bulk cumin, black peppercorns, basmati rice, and Indian chili powder among others

this Christmas it'll be me, wife, kiddo, and kitties.

Christmas Eve we'll be going to the carols service at our church.

I'll be picking up our turducken on Monday, just in time for it to defrost for Christmas Day, which we'll spend together as a family enjoying lots of traditional and contemporary foods such as baked Brie, the turducken with assorted side dishes, Christmas pudding, Christmas cake, sherry, port, and so on.

No curry, though. I will face mutiny in the ranks if I try to curry the turducken 

a small observation on the "restaurant food tastes better" comments:

restaurants use a lot more salt than you think

restaurants use a lot more sugar than you think

restaurants use a lot more fat than you think

because salt, sugar, and fat make everything taste better, because we're programmed to crave them all.

What do you get when you take your leftover Goan pork  vindaloo and add lentils and dansak spices? I'm calling it vindansakaloo, or even "yum!".

16 years next month for us. Couldn't afford to move back, everything is so stupidly expensive, and that's leaving aside that the national and regional UK governments seem to have all gone bat poop insane.