মাটোন বিরিয়ানি
Mutton Biriyani
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| Biriyani served normally, i.e. not in a flour casing, because my house isn't try-hard Indian restaurant |
This is going to be one of those epic recipe posts. Not so much because I'm going to waffle, but rather because the recipe itself is so long it may as well be a novel. Biriyani I believe needs little introduction: a dish that mixes meat and rice, possibly of Persian origins, it has travelled throughout South and Southeast Asia, and most regions nowadays produce their own varieties. The recipe below is what my mom cooks at home, and is close to what I could call Dhaka-style biriyani - though it is not identical to what you'd get from traditional roadside eateries. I've been building up to this post for a while, watching people cook biriyani and even cooking it with more experienced friends whenever possible. I wanted to wait till I was a reasonably competent cook before I had a go at this myself, so that I wouldn't mess it up and could post an actually workable recipe.
As luck would have it my mom visited me earlier this year, so the photos you see are of what we cooked together and the recipe below has been signed off by her. A few words of advice though - I used 1.50 kg of meat for 1.00 kg of rice - but be as generous (or stingy!) as you want with the meat to rice ratio. My mom wanted to go for 2.00 kg of meat to 1.00 kg of rice, but I convinced her we shouldn't be eating quite so much red meat. The liver I used is definitely optional - the only way liver ends up in Dhaka biriyani is if there isn't enough of it to make a standalone curry. But liver in biriyani is a weakness of mine, and therefore a quirk in our household. Biriyani houses in Dhaka serve each portion of the dish with potatoes, a boiled egg and a side salad - but I don't mention the egg anywhere below because I don't like eggs have a complicated relationship with eggs.
Finally, I know restaurants around the world serve various types of biriyanis with chicken, fish, vegetables etc., but those didn't really exist back home until recently. Chicken biriyani isn't a thing for example - instead we have a lighter chicken and rice combo sold by biriyani houses called morog-polao (morog meaning chicken). Similarly, we have a fish-based ilish-polao, though this is mostly cooked at home. The spice combinations for these two dishes are different from traditional Dhaka biriyani, and I'm not sure how I would go about cooking them. If you're feeling adventurous, perhaps try cooking a more heavily spiced version of my classic chicken curry into your polao - but you're on your own with that kind of experimentation (though do let me know the results!).
