Frugal Food: Biryani from the Left-overs.

Curry Night is an almost weekly fixture, and one of the few cooking traditions I've carried over from life in the UK. That, and fish on a Friday, simply because that's the day we go shopping and that's the day the fishmongers have the best fish. 

Nine times out of ten when I cook curry it will be a vegan meal - dal, bread more often than rice and a couple of vegetable dishes. Sometimes yoghurt will creep in, and occasionally we'll blow the budget and buy some local meat from the village butcher and have a vindaloo, subtle and highly flavoured and hot yes, but not numb your mouth and burn your throat hot. What would be the point of that - this is food not some macho eating contest!

Left-over Pumpkin Podima & Dal

I am normally careful to cook just what we can - and need - to eat; no left-overs, no over laden plates and absolutely nothing going in the bin. But because of cooking multiple dishes, curry night is the day most likely to leave some food uneaten; it usually ends up in the little three drawer freezer to come out as what my folks delightfully call second-hand dinners. But the other alternative is to re-use the left-overs later in the week and this take on a biryani is a great way to use up dal and certain vegetable dishes. 

Today I have pumpkin podima to play with, steamed pumpkin mashed and then mixed with a blend of fried aromatics, along with the dal. There is also some classic braised red cabbage which may or may not go in, depending on how the pot is looking.

The principle is to make a one pot dish of layered meat, vegetables and rice, all of the components are partly cooked before being completed in one heavy casserole dish, either in the oven or on the stove top. The dish can be grand with the addition of saffron flavoured butter, almonds or cashews and even gold leaf, or the frugal simplicity of lentils, vegetables and rice. Funnily enough, this is the route I'm taking!

My layers today will be a lightly spiced onion gravy layer, then the left over dishes, topped off with part-cooked rice, crispy fried onions, possibly walnuts (because we had a good harvest) and puffed up fried raisins. A layer of foil goes on the pot beneath a tight fitting lid and it will cook on the lowest gas for around thirty to forty minutes.

My method is based on that by Madhur Jaffrey in her 1982 BBC book Madhur Jaffrey's Indian Cookery written to accompany the TV series of the same name. I grew up eating the food from this book and still return to it for a few fundamental techniques. The method sounds complicated, but as long as you have all your elements organised in advance it is pretty straightforward.

Ingredients (Serves 2)

Left-over dal and curried vegetables  - choose ones that are not going to turn to mush during forty minutes of baking. Three or four serving spoons in total is what I used.

Onion Layer
1 onion, finely chopped
1 clove garlic, finely chopped
Piece ginger, about twice the size of the garlic clove, peeled and finely chopped or minced.
I tsp each ground coriander and cumin seeds
1/4 tsp ground turmeric
2 whole cloves
5 whole cardamon pods
1/2 tsp whole black pepper
Veg oil for frying
Half a tin of tomatoes or a couple of fresh tomatoes (optional)

Crispy Fried Onions and Raisins to Garnish

Additional Optional Flavourings for serving -
An onion, halved and then thinly sliced before being fried to a crisp
A small handful of nuts - cashew or almond work best, browned
A small handful of raisins, fried briefly until they puff
A hard boiled egg or two - very traditional, but not something I like
Gold leaf - not ever in my house!!

180g Basmati rice, soaked for thirty minutes.

Salt and pepper
1/8 tsp ground turmeric
1/2 tsp garam masala
Handful of fresh coriander - I don't believe that parsley is a good alternative, whatever it may say in the book! Although it does look pretty.

Method

First prepare your additional flavourings if using. 
Hard boil the eggs.
Fry each item (excluding the eggs and gold) in a small amount of oil in the bottom of a heavy based cast iron type casserole with a tight fitting lid. Choose one that is large enough to eventually hold all of the ingredients. The onions should be crispy, the nuts just browned. 
Set each item aside as it is ready and go on to make the onion layer.

Chopped onion, garlic and ginger for the Onion Gravy

Heat 1 tbs vegetable oil on a medium heat in the bottom of the same dish and when hot add the whole spices. Fry, stirring for a few moments until the spices have started to smell aromatic and then add the onion, garlic and ginger and continue to fry on a medium heat, stirring occasionally until the onion is a rich golden brown. Don't let the mixture catch or the garlic will become bitter.

Add the ground spices and stir and fry for a minute or two and then add enough water to make a thick gravy; you are making the onions moist rather than making a runny sauce, but you need enough liquid to prevent the bottom burning. If feeling less frugal half a tin of tomatoes or a couple of fresh ones peeled, seeded and chopped in place of the water will produce a much richer dish.

I remove the cardamon pods and cloves at this point as they are not nice eaten, but leave in the black pepper corns.  

Season with salt and then carefully add your left over ingredients to the centre of the dish in layers. leave a gap around the edge as the rice will be piled up over the top in a pyramidal mound.

For the rice, bring a large pot of water to the boil with a good pinch of salt, drain the soaking rice and add to the pot. When the water returns to the boil time the rice for six minutes. When the time is up drain the rice and run a little cold water over it to stop the cooking. 

Mound the rice over the left-overs and onion layer, sprinkle the top with garam masala and 1/8 tsp turmeric. Seal the top with foil and then the lid. Set on the lowest gas possible and leave to cook for around forty minutes. 

Serve garnished with the additional toppings of your choice and the freshly chopped coriander leaves.

Ready to dig in!

Please Note - Frugal French Living means that the food photos for the blog are real photos of my actual food and cooking. This is the food we are going to be eating when the cooking is finished. There are no tricks, no styling, no spare plates of food for repeat takes. These are simple photos from my kitchen in action!