How to cook biryani?

To be honest there are 100s of ways to cook this dish and I must say no one can claim his method or recipe is the best. I would say which ever methods you choose the following must be present;

a) fundamental ingredients like yogourt, major spices and basmati rice,

b) fundamental technique

I started cooking biryani in 1990 and has been cooking since. I know a few major methods but I must tell whichever methods you choose, sheer persistence and practise are paramount.

I have very limited space in my kitchen so I am not able to cook in large quantity. Biryani tastes and cooks better with large quantity. If you live in an apartment, you would be lucky if you can cook for say 50-100 people. I have managed to cook for 50++ so far, but it was rather messy.

The picture should my magic biryani pot. That pot has churned out tonnes of steaming hot and pluffy briyani.

I can do this unpaid

If I can do only one job in the world, it would be cooking. I can spend hours cooking. I like to cook difficult dish. I am not mee goreng or bee hun goreng type. You can cook that if you want.

I am into briyani, bukhari, rendang tok, tajine, Irish stew and the likes.

I have cooked for quantities and would rejoice the challenge. Give me a bigger space, a helper and a sharp knife, I will cook up a storm. This picture is my biryani which I cooked for a small fuction. It took 5 hours, preparation and cooking time but the result was satisfactory...... as always.

One day I would like to cook for bigger crowd, a few thousands may be. It is more challenging when cooking for such crowd. I think the challenge is more on the speed rather than ingredients.

What do I do for a living??

Mostly helping people to secure, protect or sometime hide their assets offshore. I have been in offshore business for more than 12 years now and since the last one year I have been enjoying it more than ever. The fee is good but there is a lot of pressure too.

If you think you pay too much tax I probably one of the professionals you have to see first. I have helped clients save millions of dollars (they don't share that much with me) and I mean this for real. But one needs to have reasonable expectation for profit in offshore matters as the cost of setting offshore companies, trust and bank a/cs are not cheap.

To learn more about what I do please go to http://www.simplyoffshore.com/

I am in http://www.malaysia2ndhomer.com/ too.

Woman & wife

A popular saying goes..."behind every succesful man stands a woman". There are three lovely women there..a Chinese-Phillipino looking in black top named Suzy, a Mediteranean looking in the middle named Francessca and the last but not the leaset, retired Bollywood actress, Sushma Kapoor. I would choose the Chinese-Phillipino looking one. Of all the three, all have fallen in love with my biryani but only one had fallen in love with me.

Must I tell you which is the woman in my life?

My biryani fans

I have at least two fans for my biryani. My two lovely daughters. Saira the younger can really eat and she can wolf a plateful passionately. Dania the elder is more refined in her taste, preferring to be very reserved and not so adventurous. But when come to her Dad's biryani she is sold.

I find that children can be the best critics to your food. They do not know how to safe your face so if your food is not nice they will tell you so. Adult tend to be diplomatic, trying not to antagonise you so they would rather say something you like to hear. I find asking adult's opinion on your cooked food rather unreliable. I mean if you are looking for very critical unbiased opinion.

I have tested my biryani to many and so far I hear good words but I know some (adults again) who refrain to be candid. I know, I would do the same.

History of Biryani

The word "biryani" comes from its Persian origin which means "fried before cooking". Whether the act of frying refers to frying the rice grain or others is not known but many afficiniados thinks the former is the case.