Prawn Biryani

This is a great recipe for left-over rice which we often have available: every good household should have several woks and a Chinese Rice Cooker? These wonderful machines are incredibly cheap in any Chinese supermarket (don’t buy one anywhere else, they cost a fortune), you just put in rice, salt and water and it cooks and stays warm all by itself. I still haven’t worked out how they work (well with electricity obviously, you have to plug it in) – they automatically switch from “rice cooking” mode to “keep warm” mode somehow.

– fry some onions and pepper in ghee or oil
– grind up a spice paste with cardomom, cloves, chilli peppers, cinnamon, turmeric (haldi – important for yellow color, you can also use saffron) and garlic
– add cooked rice, a tin of peas and the spice mixture to the pan
– stir and heat throroughly and add peeled (cooked) prawns
– serve with cucumber raita and mango chutney

There are endless alternatives and variations to this recipe, replace the shrimps with cooked chicken pieces, left-over meat, the remains of a curry, fish, or mixed vegetables. Mushrooms are good too but they make the rice turn to a sickly colour of grey so it’s not so presentable. You can also use this dish in large quantities as the centre of a curry tiffin – decorate with chopped coriander, toasted almonds or cashews and chopped white and yolk of hard boiled eggs.