Veg biryani

Before you start

• a wide pan with a tight lid
• about an hour and a quarter start to finish

Ingredients

Serves 4 · dimmer marks are storecupboard

• 400gbasmati rice
• 500gmixed vegetables — carrot, beans, cauliflower, peas, potato
• 150gnatural yoghurt
• 3 tbspghee
• 4onions
• 40gcashews
• 1 pinchsaffron
• 50mlmilk or water — warm, for the saffron
• 1 tbspgaram masala, chilli and turmeric
• 1 tbspgreen cardamom, cloves, bay leaves and cinnamon
• 1 thumbginger and garlic
• 1 large bunchmint and coriander

Method

7 steps

1. fry · 28m

   Onions sliced thin and fried slowly in the ghee to brown and crisp, most of them lifted out. Cashews browned in the same fat and set aside with them.

2. chop · 10m

   Vegetables into pieces big enough to survive the steam. Anything cut small dissolves under the rice and the biryani quietly becomes khichdi.

3. fry · 18m

   Ginger-garlic and the ground spices into the pan, then the vegetables turned through until the edges catch, then the yoghurt off the boil and cooked down to a thick coating rather than a sauce.

4. boil · 12m

   Rice boiled in heavily salted water with the whole spices for exactly five minutes, then drained and left to steam dry in the colander.

5. fold · 6m

   Vegetables in the base, rice over them, saffron milk in streaks, then herbs, fried onion and cashews. Not stirred.

6. simmer · 30m walk away

   Lid on tight, lowest heat, and left alone for the whole time.

7. finish · 5m

   Ten minutes off the heat before opening, then lifted from the bottom with a wide spoon.