We visited our friends for the weekend and they cooked some fabulous food for us. They made freshly ground homemade burgers when we arrived Friday night, and then we were treated to this fantastic home-cooked Pakistani food on Saturday.
This is normally a pretty spicy dish, but Aya has been very sensitive to spicy things she got pregnant with Chloe. It’s very strange because she usually loves hot spice. The hotter the better she usually prefers. So to accommodate Aya’s fragile taste buds (and mine, I’m not a huge fan of big spicy hot) they made this dish pretty mild.
This was so good. We ate thirds and I think Aya had fourths. The kabobs were awesome too with the yogurt sauce. The kabob recipe is easy enough that I’ll make these myself at home soon. We had such a good time and thoroughly enjoyed the food.
RECIPES:
Biryani
2lbs beef cubed
3 cups rice
2-3 medium onions chopped
3 Tbp plain yogurt
3-4 tomatoes
2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp crushed red pepper
1 tsp cumin seeds
1 Tbsp minced garlic
1/2 tsp garam masala
3-4 dried plums
2 large green peppers
fresh cilantro
half a lemon
Fry the onions to a golden brown. Add garlic and beef. Then add the rest of the ingredients through the green peppers. Cook until meat is bully cooked. If the sauce is still really watery after meat is cooked, remove meat and cook sauce until it’s thickened. Then return meat back to pan. Add chopped cilantro and a the juice from half a lemon.
Next, boil the rice until the rice is 3/4 the way cooked. Add 1/2 tsp salt per cup of rice. Then strain rice.
In a large wide pot or oven proof pan, layer the rice and meat mixtures. Layer half of the rice, then add all of the meat, and then top with the other half of rice.
In a separate pan, heat a little oil and 1/2 tsp cumin seeds. After about a minute or two, pour this on top of the rice.
Mix 1/4 tsp orange or red food coloring to 1/4cup of water. Also pour this over the rice. (I was told this is just for decoration).
Bake in the oven at 350 for 30 minutes.
Chapli Kabobs
1 lb ground beef
1 onion finely chopped
1 serrano pepper finely chopped
1 tsp garlic
1 tsp minced ginger
1/2 tsp cumin seeds
1/4 tsp garam masala
1 egg
1 tsp salt
1 tsp cornstarch
1/2 bunch fresh cilantro
Combine all ingredients into a large bowl and mix together. Form meat into kabob size pieces and pan fry with a little oil until done.
Yogurt Sauce
1 cup plain yogurt
1/2 cup diced cucumbers
1/2 cup diced seeded tomatoes
1/2 tsp cumin seeds
1/2 bunch chopped fresh cilantro
salt and pepper to taste
Mix all ingredients together. Serve.
