A South Indian Christmas Eve Dinner in Germany!

So this was my first Christmas in a new country i.e. Germany (I just moved to Germany a couple of Months back from France and am originally an Indian), and hence was pretty bored out of my mind as Christmas was fast approaching since everyone I knew were back home for the holidays with family!

So I decided to get creative or rather decided to indulge in some authentic South Indian food that I generally eat when I'm back home during Christmas in India. Also since I was not too keen on spending the eve alone I had called another colleague who was home alone as well.

The dish I decided to prepare is called Kozhi Biriyani (Kozhi means chicken in my local language) and biriyani is a typical recipe that consists of cooking rice and meat together with a whole bunch of spices and vegetables that results in what I must say is the most mouth watering dish known to mankind. Period.

So this post pretty much outlines how I made the dish from scratch. What you see below is how the dish looks like. Doesn't it look just yum??!

So I started off with Cleaning the chicken pieces and made small gashes. Next I Marinated the cleaned chicken pieces for about half an hour with the marination ingredients
(Pepper powder – ½ tsp
Chilly powder – 1 tsp
Coriander powder – 1½ tsp
Turmeric powder – ¼ tsp
Lemon juice – 1 tbsp
Salt)

Then I shallow fry the chicken pieces in oil/ghee (Clarified butter) till it turns golden brown & half cooked. Once I am done I keep the chicken wrapped up in some aluminium foil to keep it warm.

Meanwhile I Grind tomato & coriander leaves to a smooth paste and Soak cashew nuts in hot water (2 tbsp) for 5-10 mins and grind it to a smooth paste.

Add finely sliced onion to the same oil/ghee (in which chicken is fried) and saute till it becomes brown. Add ginger garlic paste and crushed green chilies. Cook for 1-2 minutes. Add the tomato coriander paste and cook till the oil separates. Add garam masala (You will probably have to buy this from an Indian store nearby or from Amazon) and cook for a minute.

Add yogurt, salt and mix well. Add the fried chicken pieces and combine well. Make sure that the chicken pieces are coated well with the pasty mix. Add ½ cup water and cover and cook the chicken for like 10 minutes and when the chicken is almost done, add the cashew paste.

This completes the preparation of the meat! Next we move onto the preparation of the rice!

Wash and soak the rice (Its best to use Basmati Rice) in water for 25 minutes. I used about 3 cups in this case.

Drain the water completely. Heat oil/ghee in a vessel/pan, splutter the whole spices and add the rice. The whole spices include the following

Cardamom – 4
Cloves – 4
Cinnamon – 2 small pieces
Lemon juice – 2 tbsp
Coriander leaves – a handful
Ghee – 2-3 tbsp
Salt

Fry the rice until it starts cracking. Add the boiling water (5 cups for 3 cups of rice), lemon juice, coriander leaves & salt. Cook till the rice is done and water is completely dried. Spread the rice in a tray & keep aside.

The next part is the most important part of the entire dish!

Preheat the oven to 180 degree 10 minutes before baking the biriyani. Apply some oil/ghee to a baking dish. Put one layer of of the chicken mix in the dish. On top of that spread some rice and make another layer. Again spread another layer of chicken mix on top of the rice. Repeat the process until the chicken mix and rice is finished. The top layer should be of rice. You can drizzle oil/ghee & sprinkle coriander leaves in between the layers. Cover the dish with a wet cloth. Bake in the preheated oven for 25-30 minutes.

Next we Garnish!

Heat ghee/oil in a pan and fry the cashews & raisins. Remove them from the pan & in the remaining ghee/oil fry the onions till it becomes golden brown. Drain the excess ghee in a paper towel & keep it aside.
Garnish the baked biriyani with fried cashew, raisins, onions & coriander leaves.

And voila the dish is done! We have mouth watering biriyani all ready! Honestly speaking this is a pretty complicated dish and might take some practice to perfect it but once you do take my word for it that you shall be addicted to the flavor and aroma this dish gives out! My colleague couldn't stop stuffing her face with it and honestly neither could I :D

I have some pictures of the cooking process below!