Tandoori Chicken and Lamb Biryani (by G)

I was pretty excited by a recipe I saw Simon Hopkins make on 'The Good Cook'. Chicken marinated in yoghurt and tandoori mix then grilled.  I used chicken lovely legs and did what Simon said and it turned out pretty well - the burned patches were intentional.

Just chicken seemed like a bit of a cop out so I tried to make a biryani. Rice was parboiled and layered in a pot with tender lamb (simmered in mustard seed, coriander powder, cloves, cinnamon, yoghurt, fake chicken stock and... a bunch of other stuff - pistachio nuts went in, also cardamom pods). I as then popped into the oven for about 20 minutes then left to steam. The biryani was a bit of a disappointment - quite stodgy.  Coming across a clove or a cardamom pod was quite a wake up.

The weird blob of stuff at the bottom is bitter melon chutney. I've always wanted to buy and use bitter melon from the market so I decided to get a couple and make a chutney. The bitter melon was fried until soft with some green chilli, onion, garlic... spices - a lot of oil. When the melon was soft I added some tamarind. The chutney was very bitter so I added some sugar, and packet fried onion and packet fried garlic. I probably added a whole bunch of other things - it got a bit like 'George's Marvellous Medicine' at one point - I just added more and more things to try and get chutney to not taste bitter and terrible. It turned out pretty well in the end, though who knows exactly what went into it.

To round out the experience I dry fried some packet Ajwain Paratha - they were, of course, excellent.