Chicken Biriyani (by G)

I had an excellent biryani from a local takeaway on a whim a few weeks ago (for lunch, not dinner) and got a hankering to make one myself. The original plan was to make my own curry paste but I quickly talked myself out of that. In the end I just bought one from the spice shop (I think it's called 'Spice').

 

It seemed like a pretty authentic curry paste in that it was full of identifiable bits and looked as though it had been jarred in someones garden shed.

 

Along with the curry paste I added some fried onion and garlic, toasted slivered almonds, some browned chicken lovely legs (they're a kind of skinless drumstick with the stick cut short), par cooked rice and some stock.

 

There didn't seem to be any general consensus on the Internet as to how long to cook a biryani so I cooked it in a moderate oven for 45 minutes then let it rest for 15 minutes - that seemed to do the trick.

 

For sides I oven baked some garlic naan and mini vegetable samosas - both from a packet. The samosas came in a pack of 96 so I still have dozens and dozens of those left over for snacks.

 

I was pretty pleased with my biryani - the only drawback was that, though I know rice expands, I still couldn't help but to cook waaaaaay tooooo muuuuuuch.