Our trip to Aligarh a couple of years ago to see the Numaish, a sensory overload type of mela they have every year was very exciting but what lingers and remains in my mind about that trip was the food we got to eat at Uzi's home, made by her long time lovely cook Ruby. So when the cooking bug bit, (finally..) i knew that her recipes had to be tapped. I have no idea how close this is to the original but its a lovely light one dish meal, best eaten with papad, raita and kutchumbir...really looking forward to our next Aligarh trip to tuck in to ruby's food again :)
The only thing I would add before putting this recipe down is that it is very low on spice, i added green chilli's to give it a little zing, so depending on your spice levels you can add as you like
Mutton 1 kilo
2-3 large Onions ( cut in to big chunks)
1 Inch ginger (grind)
A whole pod or more of garlic ( the more the better/ grind)
4 Tejpata
10 or 15 pepper corns
4 Big elaichi
wrap the following ingredients in a little linen cloth and make a sealed potli/bundle
1 teaspoon dhanya sabut
1 teaspoon sauf
1 teaspoon zeera
Put all the above ingredients plus 2 teaspoons of salt in the pressure cooker with the meat,
add 4 -6 small cups of water ( such that the water is is just about covering the meat)
Give it a whistle or two and lower the flame, leave it on for 5-7 min and then take it off the gas.
Let it cool and open when cool.
Take out he little potli of spices
In a Big pan/kadai put some oil and the following
2 tejpata
4 small elaichi
2 Big elaichi
4-5 long
2-3 pieces dalchini ( Cinnamon)
Zavitri a little
Green chill to taste
Fry the bits of meat lightly with the masalas and after all done put back in the pressure cooker. Leave the water in the cooker as is.
Then take two cups of rice which you can soak for a half an hour ( 2 cups for 4 glasses of water, basically however many cups of water was put in earlier to cook the meat, half the amount of rice) and put in to the pressure cooker and cook on an open fire till water dries op/rice cooks
Separately in enough oil fry lots of onions ( 5-6 ,cut long) till brown and crispy to sprinkle on top.
Bon appetit..:)
3 comments:
This sounds great. I am going to try it out Pallavi.
Another thing Pallavi. You've said you added green chillies. Don't do that because green chillies have a distinct smell and flavour (like capsicums do)and clash with the delicate flavours of saunf, javitri etc. The reason why they are put in a potli in the rice. Through the years I have discovered that finally there's always a logic to the use of spices in Indian cuisine. If you want to add that zing to this rice then serve it along with the following chutney, which I do with such light pulaos and sometimes even paella. It goes down very well.
Some hung curd or even plain well set curd will do. Grind together a generous number of green chillies (depending of how hot you want it to be)and garlic. Mix it well with the curd with salt to taste and a pinch of sugar.
thanks pritha! that chutney sounds perfect with this actually..and your right the green chilli does kill a lot of the other delicate flavours, will try it next time.
Post a Comment