Experimental Biryani

I explored the new Tivoli Giant last week, and while there I called RJ to tell him he had to come by. He did.

One of the many things I bought on my trip was a jar of Jaipur Biryani paste, because well, it sounded good. The instructions on the jar involve frying chicken and tomatoes and onions, which was just not what I wanted to do this afternoon. This all in mind, I made my trip to the Soviet Safeway for more ingredients, and came home with about 1.75 pounds of chicken drumsticks and no further ideas. So, I looked around my kitchen, and found a couple of sweet potatoes. Wrc had suggested broiling chicken and potatoes with biryani to me a while back, so I decided to give it a shot.

First, I peeled and sliced the potatoes into circles, about ½ inch thick. I oiled them and spread about a total of 1.5 teaspoons of the biryani paste over them. It smelled good, but I wanted more, so I ground up about 8 allspice seeds and sprinkled that over top. I threw them in the oven at high heat for about five minutes (uncovered), as I gave approximately the same pre-treatment to the chicken. The chicken got salt and pepper instead of allspice.

I added the drumsticks to the potatoes, mixed it all around, adding some olive oil to the preparation dish to dissolve the remaining biryani, and pouring that over the chicken and potatoes. Now I switched the oven to broil, covered the dish with foil, and put it in on the top shelf. Flip the chicken and stir after 15 minutes. Cook another 20.

This turned out really tasty, but there are a couple things I’ll do differently next time: buy some naan, use better actually good quality chicken (i.e., not from the Soviet Safeway), add broccoli or cauliflower, and add more allspice and hot pepper.