Ashy's vegetarian recipes. © Ashy Macbean 2004.

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Quick vegetable biriyani

This, as the title says, is a quick recipe. It takes about as long as the rice takes to cook. I have another biriyani recipe which involves cooking the vegetables and rice together. I think the final dish turns out better doing that way, but it takes considerably longer and more things can go wrong. This recipe is not only quick, but easy too, and the result is still delicious.

The list of vegetables I give below can be modified to include almost anything you have in the fridge. Paneer cubes are a good addition to the mix, as is fresh or dried fruit. How about paneer and pineapple? That's a particularly nice combination.

 

Ingredients:

 

2 mugs of rice
3-and-a-bit mugs of water
1 carrot
1 green or red pepper
1/4 of a small head of cabbage
1 small onion
1 large potato
2 cm piece of fresh root ginger
A handful of cashew nuts
A small piece of cinnamon stick
1 level tsp. of coriander seeds
A few black pepper corns
3 cloves
2 cardamom pods
Half a teaspoon of turmeric powder
Vegetable oil
Salt

  Put the rice,water and some salt in a pan and stir to separate the rice grains. Put the pan, without the lid, on a fairly high flame and keep your eye on it while you prepare the vegetables.

 Peel the potato, onion, carrot and ginger and chop all the vegetables (Chop the ginger finely).

 The rice will probably have come to the boil by now. Turn the heat down very low, stir once and cover the pan.

  Heat some vegetable oil in a large pan and when it is hot, throw in the whole spices and fry for a minute before adding all the vegetables along with the cashew nuts and turmeric. Stir until everything is coated with oil and spices then cover the pan tightly. Turn the heat down fairly low and stir the vegetables every few minutes.

  When the rice is cooked, add it to the pan of vegetables and mix everything together. The biriyani is now ready to serve. It will go well with a raita or onion salad, either (or both) of which you should have time to knock together while the rice is cooking.

  more rice recipes