Curries & Stories: chicken pulao

Back in Pune the weather is right now in a transitional phase - neither hot nor cold. A couple of days last week we even got Kalboishakhi during afternoon hours which brought down the temperature considerably. But the morning hours especially around noon time is pretty hot. This kind of weather makes you feel lazy and I am no exception. I just want to have a good plate of wholesome meal and lay back with my books or indulge in writing. One pot meals are my usual go to thing when I am especially in the lazy zone but still want to have something delicious. Shah Jeera chicken pulao is one such recipe which I made by chance one day.

During my last summer visit to Kashmir I had got some really good quality Shah Jeera from the Gurez hotel chef. Shah Jeera is something which usually is very rarely used in Bengalis cuisine. So it never was a pantry staple for me. But post my Kashmir visit, since the chef had advocated about the aroma these tiny little things impart to any dish I was curious to try it out in some of my rice preparations to start with. The first thing I had made was a simple Jeera rice substituting the regular jeera with shah jeera and oh boy what a taste transformation it was! I was hooked after that. Usually during weekends I would prepare quick and dirty veg pulaos to go with some non veg dish. I started using Shah jeera in some of my veg pulaos and definitely it was a game changer for me. Without too many masalas the pulao would still turn out yummy.

This gave me the thought to try making a very simple chicken pulao in which shah jeera dominated the flavor profile. That's how this recipe was born. Folks who like a really masaledar biryani type pulao would find this one a tad too simple. But if you are one of those people like me who doesn't like too many spices in their pulao then you might give this one a try. A new recipe with a hint of Arabic flavor profile. It also reminded me of some of the dishes I had tasted in Gurez.

Interesting to note is you can skip the complete chicken part to just make a yummy shah jeera veg pulao.

Marination Time : 30 minutes
Preparation Time : 10 minutes
Cooking Time : 30 minutes

Serves - 1 adult

Ingredients :

Ambemohar / Gobindobhog / Fragrant Rice - 150 gm
Chicken Thigh - 1
Shah Jeera - 1/4 tsp
Ginger Paste (fresh) - 1/4 tsp
Clove - 1
Cardamom - 1
Cinnamon - 1/2 inch
Red Carrots (diagonal half moon / matchstick) - 20 gm
French Beans (diagonally chopped) - 15 gm
Turmeric - 1/4 tsp
Refined Oil + Ghee - 2 tsp
Salt - as per taste
Sugar - as per taste
Warm water - as needed

Ingredients for marination:

Shah Jeera - 1/4 tsp
Black peppercorn - 10
Bay Leaf - 1/2
Lemon - 1/4th
Red Chilli Powder - 1/4 tsp
Turmeric - 1/4 tsp
Turmeric powder - 1/2 tsp
Refined Oil - 1/2 tsp
Salt - as per taste

Procedure:

1. Start by toasting the Shah Jeera and bay leaf on medium flame on a tawa, continuously using the spatula so that it does not get burnt. When you get a nice aroma take it off and let it cool down. Then grind it using a mortar pestle or a masala grinder.

2. Coarsely grind the peppercorn

3. Now marinate the clean chicken with the ground shah jeera, bayleaf and black pepper along with the other ingredients mentioned under marination. Rest it for about 30 minutes to 1 hour.

4. Now take any steamer ( as per the size of the chicken). I had used a steel perforated steaming bowl. Oil it nicely to prevent chicken from steaming. I kept the steamer on a stand inside a pressure pan filled with 2 cups of water. Then placed the marinated chicken on the steamer. Post that close the lid of the cooker but don't put the vent weight. Keep the gas flame in the lowest (sim) and steam for 10-15 minutes. Open the lid and take out the chicken. The chicken should be around 80-90% done. Preserve the water which is there in the bottom to cook the pulao.

5. Wash the pressure cooker and let it heat. Add any neutral oil when hot. Let the oil heat up then fry the steamed chicken for a couple of minutes by turning side. Keep it aside.

6. Now for prepping the rice. You can take any fragrant rice, wash it and let it dry for an hour before cooking

7. In the same oil in the pressure cooker where you shallow fried the chicken, add your spices for tempering - one cardamom, two cloves, 1 inch cinnamon stick and 1/4 tsp shah jeera.

8. When the spices are fragrant, add grated ginger and toss it for a minute. Now add the chopped vegetables. Stir fry for a couple of minutes. At this stage if you want you can add cashew nuts and raisins as well.

9. Now add the washed and dried rice. Fold in and fry for a couple of minutes.

10. Add turmeric, salt and sugar.

11. Now you need to use the reserve stock water from Step No 4. Add double the amount of water to rice ( 2:1). Fold in everything.

12. Now place the chicken thigh in the middle. And add a slitted green chili. Pressure cook it for 2 whistles or till rice is cooked. Let the pressure die out.

13. Open the lid and using a fork fluff the pulao. The simple and easy pulao is done. Serve this with your choice of accompaniments.

Do let me know how you liked the simple and easy pulao recipe. You can make a good raita or serve this with some fresh salad. The flavors of this chicken are somewhat like Mandi chicken (Get the recipe HERE) but its much simpler to make.

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Day 60 of Lockdown

First of all Eid Mubarak to any of my readers who is celebrating it today. The year has been pretty weird for all of us, and we are spending most of the celebrations locked up in our homes. But this is also an experience. What cant we achieve even when our resources are limited? Its just a mindset change that's it.

This being a long weekend, I thought why not try something more elaborate this time. I had some chicken languishing in the freezer for quite sometime now. Thought to put that to good use. I am not a big biryani lover or rather I am a biryani lover but I am very specific about what biryani I like. Most of the times biryanis have mint in it, and frankly for me that is a put off. Now being a Bengali you might assume I like the kewra flavored biryani. But o I don't like that as well. Any strong smelling agent really puts my taste buds off. Rice cooked with the natural fragrant of slow cooked meat with a few essential spices is all that I want in any kind of meat-rice. So I am more of a Pulao person than a biryani person I realized long back.

While checking out some nice pulao recipe on the net I had stumbled upon the name of Dhakai Morog Pulao. It was intriguing because Dhaka is the capital city of Bangladesh, and Bangladeshi cuisine, especially puran dhaka is really famous for its variety and taste. Traditionally this is cooked with desi morog (rooster) but if you don't get a rooster you can always replace it with chicken. That is what I have done here.

After browsing though almost 8-10 morog pulao recipes I made an extract of all the steps I felt would suit my palate. So this is how I made this recipe. The key to a good biryani or pulao is the ratio of meat to rice. Once that is handled you are good to go. I have basically used 2:1 ratio of chicken to rice. Which means rice is half of amount of chicken. The recipe wont taste like a biryani, because its much mildly spiced than a typical biryani. Green chillies add the necessary heat to cut through the fried sweet onions.

It is pretty elaborate and takes as much time as to make a biryani. But its worth all the effort.

Marination Time : Overnight

Preparation Time : 30 minutes

Cooking Time: 1.5 hours

Serving : 2 person

Ingredients (for Chicken):

Chicken - 500 gm
Hung Curd - 1 cup
Red chilli powder - 2 tsp + 2 tsp
Bay leaf - 2
Cardamom - 3
Black Cardamom - 1
Cinnamon - 2 one inch
Clove - 2
Onion - 2 cup
Green Chilli - 2-3
Tamarind Paste - 1 tbsp
Ginger - 1 tbsp
Garlic - 1 tbsp
Green Chilli Paste - 1 tbsp
Sugar - 2 tbsp
Almond paste - 2 tbsp
Poppy seed paste - 2 tbsp
Milk - 1 cup
Salt to taste
Ghee- 1/4th cup

Ingredients (for Rice):

Basmati/ Fragrant rice - 250 gm
Ghee - 1/4 th cup
Water - 375 ml (3/4 th of 500 ml)
Milk - 125 ml (1/4th of 500 ml)
Bay leaf - 1
Green cardamom - 2
Cinnamon - 1 inch
Sugar - 1 tsp
Salt - As per taste

Ingredients (for finishing):

Raisin - 9-10
Green Chillies - 3
Rose water - 1 tbsp
Boiled Egg - 1
Potato - 1 large, halved and fried

Procedure (Preparing the chicken):

1. Wash and clean the chicken. Preferably take big leg piece. Make a few slits in the bigger pieces.

2. Take hung curd in a bowl and add 1 tbsp red chilli powder. Mix into a uniform thick paste

Tip: If you are using any market bought curd, then make sure you drain all the water from. Either keep it in a muslin cloth and let water drain. Or simply put it in a strainer and let it sit for a while.

3. Coat the chicken with the paste and let it marinate overnight or at least for 2-3 hours. I marinated overnight.

Tip: Please note I am not adding any salt to the marinate. Because salt would drain water out of the chicken and make the marinate watery.

4. Take a deep bottom wok and heat the ghee in the wok. When fragrant add the whole masalas - green and black cardamom, cinnamon, bay leaf and cloves.

Tip: To get the authentic flavor of Morog Pulao, make sure you do the cooking entirely in ghee. But if you don't want to add all ghee, then substitute half with any refined oil.

5. Chop the onions into slices and when the spices are fragrant, add the onions into the ghee. Need to fry this onions till it attains the beautiful reddish brown color of barista.

Tip: Keep the flame of the gas on high and you need to continuously stir to make sure the onion doesn't burn

6. When the onion gets the reddish color, add the ginger and garlic paste and fold in. Add about quarter cup of water and stir in, to prevent it from sticking to the wok.

7. Add the chilli paste. Cover and cook till the onions are soft and oil comes out. Keep checking on the onions regularly to prevent from burning.

8. When the water dries out and onion is soft, add the marinated chicken along with the marinade. Fold in.

9. Add the tamarind pulp at this stage and fold in

Tip: If you don't have tamarind pulp you can substitute it with tamarind sauce but it might tamper with the flavor. So i would recommend in that case omit the step completely.

10. Cover and cook the chicken till it starts getting white or changes color. Keep turning the chicken frequently so that it doesn't stick to the wok.

11. Make a paste of poppy seeds and almonds.

Tip: This can be done two ways. Either dry roast the poppy seeds and the almonds and then grind to a paste. Or simply grind the raw poppy seed and almond into a paste. The first option would give a slightly nutty aroma to the chicken. I followed the first.

Tip: If you don't have poppy seeds or almond, you can omit this step. Or if you have any one of them that is also fine. Almond can also be replaced with cashew.

12. Add the poppy seed and almond paste and fold in. You need to stir continuously to make sure it doesn't stick.

13. Boil the milk and keep ready. At this stage after mixing the nut paste add the milk and stir in. Cook the chicken with cover on till the chicken becomes soft.

Tip: The milk should be boiled and hot when it is added to the wok, otherwise it may curdle.

14. Chicken will start releasing water. Now cook till the water starts to dry off and the gravy thickens. At this stage add the sugar and fold in. Now keep the gas on sim and let it cook till the water evaporates and gravy becomes pretty thick. Make sure you stir the chicken frequently.

15. Now follow the rice cooking procedure

16. Chicken should be nicely cooked by now. Switch off the flame and take out the chicken in a separate dish.

17. Now continue with assembling of the rice procedure

Procedure (Preparing the rice):

1. Take basmati or any flavored rice and wash it properly. Drain the water and keep it to dry. All water should be properly drained before we start cooking the rice.

Tip: The amount of rice should be half of the weight of chicken. Since I had taken 500 gm chicken so I have taken 250 gm rice

2. When the chicken is almost done, we will start cooking the rice. Take another deep bottomed kadai and add heat it.

3. Add ghee and when it is hot add the bay leaf, cardamom, cinnamon.

Tip: Again the pulao should be completely made in ghee to get the authentic flavor.

4. Now add the washed rice into the wok and keep stirring softly. Fry the rice till you feel it becomes heavy.

5. Now the water to cook the rice needs to be added. Water should be double the amount of rice. Which means 500 ml of water. Now instead of 500 ml of water, i have taken 3/4th water and 1/4th milk. Make sure both milk and water are boiling hot when adding, this will quicken the cooking process. Add 1 tsp of salt and sugar to it and fold in everything nicely.

6. At this point the gas is on full and cooking without a lid while stirring regularly. Continue to cook till the water starts reducing and you can see the rice. Now lower the gas on medium and cover and cook till the water is absorbed and rice is 3/4th cooked. You can occasionally give it a gentle stir just to make sure all the rice is cooked.

Tip: Take care not to stir vigorously because it will break the rice. Be very gentle while stirring.

7. While the rice is cooking go to step 16 of chicken.

Procedure (Assembly of the Pulao)

1. The rice should be 3/4th cooked and all the water should be absorbed by now. Take off the lid and switch off the gas. Now the chicken and the rice assembly will begin which will take some time so it is better to switch of the gas at this point.

2. Take off half of the cooked rice into a separate dish.

3. Take the gravy from the chicken and spoon it over the rice. You can also mix it a bit.

4. Now place the chicken pieces on the rice in a single layer. Take care while handling the chicken as it might break. Add the fried potato and boiled whole egg at this point.

5. Now add the other half of the rice on top of the chicken and egg layer uniformly so as to cover the chicken completely.

6. Add a few raisins, slitted green chilli on top.

7. Sprinkle 1 tsp of rose water over the rice

Tip: For those who love the flavor of Kewra can add 1/4th tsp of kewra essence at this point. Personally I don't like it.

8. Now cover the lid and if it has any steam outlet then block it with a clove. Put the gas on low and let it sit on dum for about 10 minutes.

Tip: If the wok doesn't have a heavy bottom then, the rice may stick, so just add a tawa below the wok so as to distribute the heat properly to the wok.

9. After 10 minutes, let the rice sit for about 5 minutes more before serving.

Gently mix the pulao before serving. have it just like that or with raita or any other non veg gravy side.

Do try this out and tag me (@curriesnstories07) on Instagram on your photos whenever you try the recipe and I will give a shout out to you.