30 Mar 2008

How to make vegetable biriyani

Go to neighbourhood grocery store and pick up a packet of Kitchens of India veg biriyani paste

Watch a movie, shop and arrive at home two hours before dinner party is supposed to begin

Read recipe at the back of the pack carefully and realise the process will take 1.5 hours.

Get stressed and switch on music loudly to stop you from hearing your own thoughts.

Marinate masala, vegetables and curd in a bowl for 20 minutes. Keep alarm in mobile to remind you of the time. Infact keep mobile handy to ensure all timings followed to the T.

Measure out rice and put it in the cooker

Heat 2 tablespoons ghee in a pan and worry about how your arteries are going to choke in 2 hours. Add marinated veggies and simmer in low flame for 30 minutes with the pan covered

Rice is ready. Time to check on veggies.

Thick layer of ghee floating on top. Otherwise, looking ok. Pat yourself on the back, remove lid, turn heat to high, set alarm on mobile for 5 minutes and read a book

Arrive at end of 5 minutes to find a thick layer of burnt veggies at bottom of pan.

Panic

Panic

Panic

Turn off gas. Carefully remove the burnt part of curry and mix the rest with rice. Put on stove on LOW flame.

Pray

After 3 minutes, turn off the gas

Serve to guests after having loaded them with food made by the cook. So they are too full to want too much of biriyani

Don’t call it biriyani. Call it burnt masala rice.

7 comments:

Ajeya said...

:) sounds hectic!

Bharathis said...

It is the thought that counts with your friends, not the taste!

Lakshmi said...

sounds familar ...happenned many times :) thanks for dropping by at backpakker

Bharati said...

Haaaaaaaaa.........hilarious.........i just cant stop laughing.......gr8 goin......u r getting loads of opportunity in MUMBAI to test ur cooking skills........LAGE RAHO.....

Anonymous said...

LOL!!!
Though, you should feel proud that your goal was set pretty high. During my university life I was given the trivial task of preparing white rice in an ELECTRIC cooker. Any guesses for how I screwed it up. I put the rice and the water directly into the cooker without the vessel - on the coil. Few minutes later our cooker was toast:-)

Anita said...

ajeya - it was

bharathis - yeah, i pointed that to my friends several times

backpakker - will visit again

blm - don't ask about opportunities. i would call them all mini tragedies

theghoshwhowalks - ah. that sounds so much worse than me :)

Anonymous said...

LOL... sounds like one of the bad hair days ... happened to me a couple of times.. :)