Biryani Test Run

So Thursday, we had a trial run of the biryani recipe I had researched for this month's 3RD. I spent hours scouring the net, looking at various biryani recipes, and settling on two that sounded closest to how I like my biryani. I then compared the ingredients and created a full list of ingredients from between the two. After that, I pretty much used one's cooking regimen with only minor tweaks from the other. In the end, a full-sized sheet of cooking instructions. Wow.

The dish took about 4 hours to prepare. It yielded about 8-12 servings, depending on serving size. And it was nearly perfect. About the only thing not right was it could use a little more lamb, and a little more saffron. Other than that, the taste was spot on, the consistency was spot on, and it was amazingly good.

Nemo and KD came over to partake of the experiment...and both left pleasantly stuffed and well-pleased.

Additionally, Nemo had brought over his mother's asian cookbook. Thirty years old, it had served his family quite well, and thanks to their family and travels, the dishes for Sri Lanka and India and a few others had been authenticated. There was even a hand-written family recipe for pickled pineapple. It all looks delicious. Nemo's maternal unit had offered to let me borrow it to copy out of, learn from, et cetera. When looking at the amazing wealth of information, and the wonderful 30 year old retro quality of the book, I quickly hopped online the next day to look for a copy.

Luckily, I found the same first-edition copy, in good condition, for a not unobtainable price. So I ordered it right away. As soon as I have my copy, I can go through their's page by page and transcribe their notes, and return the book quicker than I could have otherwise. Thank you to Nemo and his mother! And thank you, Internet, for helping me find this precious tome!