Hello everyone, what you are reading right now is my 250th blog post. This blog was started on June 18th, 2013 with my very first post Puppy Face Eggless Cookies. Over the past 3 years with my full time IT job(currently not working) and a toddler in the home , I somehow managed to reach this level with 250 posts. Though at times I take a long break, I never want to leave this space because it is creating a new Identity for me and giving so much inner peace. These 3 years has taught me so many new things in cooking and many things have changed in my personal life too. Some of you have been reading since beginning and I am grateful. I really thank all my followers who try the recipes I post and especially people who take extra effort in sharing with me the picture of the tried dishes. Your likes and comments in my social media really motivate me. Please continue the same support.
I thought that I would celebrate this milestone with a post about one of my favorite recipe. I am very much fond of Thalapakatti mutton Biryani and I have tasted it many times when I was in Chennai. I have read lot about this biryani in magazines and websites. I went quite a few times to taste the biryani just to identify the uniqueness of the biryani. These are my observations: It is made of Jeeraga Samba rice and not with our normal basmati rice. It doesn't have tomato in it and the spiciness mainly comes from the green chilli. Also, I think turmeric powder was not used. (Not sure). My mom has saved so many cooking related paper cuttings from magazines which I found it a year back. This recipe is from one of the magazine paper cuttings and it turned out super good when I tried it. I am not sure weather this is the real recipe but it is closely related to that. Here, we go to the preparation steps.
Ingredients:Jeerga Samba Rice - 2 cups
Mutton - 1/2 Kg
Oil - 2 tbsp
Ghee - 1 tbsp + 1 tsp
Shallots(Small Onion) - 20(peeled)
Curd - 1/4 Cup
Red Chilli Powder - 1/2 tsp
Lemon - 1/2
Salt - as required
Water - as required
For the Biryani Masala:
Green Chilli - 5(Original recipe calls for 10)
Ginger - 1.5 inch piece
Garlic - 10 cloves(Peeled)
Whole Black Pepper - 1/2 tsp
Cinnamon - 1 inch piece
Star Anise - 1
Mace - 1
Nutmeg Powder - a pinch
Cloves -3
Cardamom - 3
Coriander leaves - 1/4 cup
Mint leaves - 1/4 cup
Method:
1. Soak the Jeerga samba rice for 30 mins to 45 mins. Then crush the peeled small onions(Shallots) in a mixie jar using pulse option without adding water. Keep it aside. In a pressure cooker pan, add the oil and ghee. Once it is heated up, add the crushed shallots. Saute it in low flame.
2. Meanwhile, grind the items under 'For the Biryani Masala' to a fine paste by adding 1/4 cup of water. Add this to the pan and mix it gently. Cook it well for around 10 mins in low-medium flame until the oil separates.
3. Now add the washed mutton pieces and mix everything together. Add 1/2 cup of water and the curd.
4. Bring it to boil and add the chilli powder, required salt at this stage. Close the cooker and pressure cook it for 7 to 10 whistles until the mutton is tender and juicy.
5. Once the pressure releases, open the cooker and approximately measure the liquid content excluding the mutton pieces. For me around half cup water content was there with the mutton. So I added 3.5 cups of water additionally to cook the rice. (2 cups of rice requires 4 cups of water). Bring it again to rolling boil and add the soaked rice after draining the water. Cover the pan and cook it in medium flame for 5 mins. Open the pan and give everything a gentle mix without breaking the rice grains. Drizzle 1 tsp of ghee on top of it and close the pan again. Cook it in very low flame for another 10 mins. Then move the pressure cooker with the lid closed on top of a hot dosa tava and dum cook for another 10 minutes. Switch off the flame and keep it undisturbed for 15 mins until the moisture is absorbed completely.
Open the pan and fluff the rice with a fork. By now the rice would have absorbed all the moisture and the rice would have swollen. Serve the yummy divine biryani with egg and onion raita.
- Rice to water ratio is 1: 2, so measure the left over water content after cooking the mutton and accordingly add water to cook the rice.(For 1 cup we need 2 cups of water)
- The original recipe calls for crushing the peeled garlic and saute it along with onion. But I grinded along with the biryani masala.
- You can skip 1/2 tsp of whole pepper that I have added since it is not there in the original recipe.
- I used the pressure cooker to cook the mutton and used the same cooker for dum cooking too. ( I have not used whistle). If you don't prefer it this way then you can transfer the entire content to a wide pan before dum cooking. I feel using a cooker is mess free.
Happy's Cook - Divya
I'm saving this recipe Divya :) we r ardent biriyani lovers.. will try for sure..
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