Over the years, I played with the ingredients, keeping careful record of what I’d done each time, what worked and what didn’t, until finally I got it perfected. Of course, it takes most of the day (I’m disabled, and have to do it in steps that are well-spaced out by periods of rest) and most of the pans in the house, LOL.
I have a terrific mess to clean up at the end. Now… keep in mind, this is how *I* do it. Any self-respecting Middle Eastern woman is going to toss together all the ingredients and whip up a fabulous biryani without thinking twice about it, right?
The last time I made biryani I took pictures, because, social media addict that I am, I decided to put pictures each step of the way and post them as I went, LOL. So here we go!
BIRYANI
INGREDIENTS:
1 whole chicken
6-8 med potatoes
1½ C. rice
½ box orzo (1 C) (Barilla Pasta makes it)
½ stick butter
2 Tbsp. chicken bouillon granules or 1 Tbsp. chicken base
green peas or golden raisins (optional)
Spices:
salt
pepper
1 Tbsp. Bombay Biryani mix (see notes below)
Cardamom, ground or a few whole seeds
Cloves, ground
Cumin, ground
Cinnamon, ground
Turmeric, ground
Nutmeg, ground
Ginger, fresh (you can get fresh grated ginger in a squeeze bottle in the produce section of the supermarket; ground will do though)
INSTRUCTIONS:
Step 1a: Boil chicken until cooked; remove but save liquid.
Step 2: In same large skillet, brown rice and orzo in ½ stick butter; add salt and chicken bouillon or base. Stir in 3-1/2 C. water, cover and simmer on low til the rice is done.
Step 2a: Add generous shakes of cinnamon, nutmeg, clove to taste. Add a few of the cardamom seeds; cardamom is quite strong and can be bitter, so add a few and taste before adding more. Add some of the Biryani mix; this will add hot spice to your biryani, so use just a little for mild, more for hot… a VERY little for mild! It gets hot fast! Keep tasting before adding more!. When done, remove from skillet.
Step 3: Peel and cut potatoes into bite-sized pieces. In same large skillet, fry in olive oil until brown. Add as much salt as you usually would for the amount of potatoes. Add a good portion of ginger, a generous amount of cinnamon, a few shakes of nutmeg and turmeric. Cook til potatoes are done. Remove from skillet.
Step 4: In a very large pot (I use my turkey roaster), place rice/orzo mixture, chicken and potatoes. Add 1 C chicken stock that you saved from boiling the chicken, and heat. Add more chicken stock as necessary so the mixture is slightly moist, not dry.
(Please note, it will not come out with this greenish tint to it… that was my camera and the lighting in the kitchen. It’s definitely yellowish though, from the turmeric, like the color in the picture of the rice above)
QUANTITY: This makes a TON of food! I haven’t actually measured it, but I put wind up with nearly a dozen freezer bowls in my freezer and it’ll last me weeks. It re-heats just fine in the microwave 😊
Optional: Add peas with spicy hot biryani, or golden raisins with mild.
Additional Note: You can get Bombay Biryani mix on Amazon, if you don’t have an Indian or Asian ethnic store near you: …I do recommend the mix because it enhances the flavor as well as the spicy level, but if you can’t get hold of it and want some heat to your biryani, add in a few Serrano chiles, halved lengthwise. Again be careful, these are quite hot!
A
Gift of Jacinth
Wishes
and Dreams
Book
Two
Allie
McCormack
Genre: Paranormal Romance
Date of Publication: June 4, 2019
ISBN: 1798958880
ASIN: B07PFLKQ5C
Number of pages: 377
Word Count: 96,269
Cover Artist: Dar Albert of Wicked Smart Designs
Tagline: Douglas needed a miracle. What he got was a
genie...
Book Description:
Veterinarian Douglas McCandliss
considered himself an ordinary kinda guy with an ordinary kinda life. He had no
idea why he'd bought the old silver teapot, and when a young woman appeared
before him claiming to be a genie, he almost wished he hadn't. If only she
wasn't so damned cute.
Ebullient and cheerful, Jacinth
loved granting wishes and helping people. So she was thrilled when her teapot's
new owner, a single father with custody of two young children, asked her to
stay until he could find a nanny. The problem was, the longer she stayed, the
more she was attracted to Douglas, and she was certainly not willing to turn
over care of Ben and little Molly to just anybody. But she was a 900 year old
genie, and had no intention of falling in love with a mortal man. None
whatsoever.
Excerpt:
It wasn’t going
to be all that easy, after all, he thought as he looked at Benny’s scared,
apprehensive face a few hours later.
“Benny.” He
squatted down to the boy’s level, holding his gaze reassuringly. “It’s very
safe. Planes don’t usually crash, or fly into buildings, I promise. Those were
accidents.”
“Mom said they
did,” Benny told him, fear in his voice. “She was always watching plane crashes
on the news. She watched them over and over.”
Was that how
Lilian had planned to keep him from taking the kids if he found them? Douglas
had to wonder. Certainly, she’d always had a taste for the morbid and the
sensational, but to deliberately implant a fear of flying in a young child when
she had taken the children the width of the continent away from him, was going
too far. Molly looked scared too, even abandoning Jacinth to cling to her brother’s
hand. Tears welled up in those bottomless blue eyes, and her lower lip trembled
ominously. If he was going to put these two on the plane, it was going to have
to be by brute force.
Exchanging a
glance with Jacinth, he saw his opinion mirrored in her face. They had two
choices. They could find another mode of travel to New York, or carry two
screaming, terrified children onto the airplane. Douglas had never considered
himself lacking in courage, but his nerves quailed at the graphic image that
conjured up.
“Okay, okay,
don’t panic,” he told them. “Give me a couple of minutes here and I’ll think of
something.”
He moved a few
feet away from the car where they all stood, still in the parking lot at the
zoo. Jacinth followed, and he lowered his voice to consult with her.
“What am I
supposed to do? Dammit, we’re three thousand miles from home! Did Lilian do
this on purpose?”
Jacinth gnawed
on her lower lip, feeling her brows pull together as she pondered.
“Probably,” she
agreed. “I think you’re going to have to rent the car all the way to New York,
Douglas.”
His grimace was
rueful. “That distressing possibility occurred to me. At least that would be
better than taking the bus or the train, which are our only other options. Four
days in a car with two young children, though, is my idea of a nightmare.
They’re so little, and it’s been so long since we’ve been together, we’re
complete strangers to each other. This is definitely not how I’d choose to get
to know each other again.”
Jacinth twinkled
at him. “You have a nanny,” she reminded him. “And once you’re home, you have
your job to go to. This might turn out for the best for both you and the
children. By the time we get to New York you’ll have established a rapport with
them.
Enthusiasm fired
in her, and she felt a burst of excitement. “It’ll be fun, Douglas. We can play
car games, and I can read them stories, and we’ll buy some of those children’s
sing-along CD’s. We can eat at truck stops and roadside diners along the way,
then stop at motels in the afternoon. The children can nap, then we can go to
dinner, and maybe swim in the motel pool in the evening. We can buy postcards
and a camera and take lots of pictures.”
She watched
Douglas hopefully as he thought this over. Driving across America wasn't
something she'd ever have thought of doing, or even wanting to do, but now she
was seized with a great longing. Perhaps it was because of the presence of
Douglas and the children, having someone to share this great new adventure
with.
“It doesn’t
sound like such a bad idea, when you put it that way,” Douglas admitted. “Maybe
this could work after all.”
Hope sprang up
in her breast as another thought occurred to her. “If we’re not going to fly
out from here tonight, could we stay one more day and go to Disneyland
tomorrow?”
Douglas broke
into laughter. “Okay, yes, we’ll go to Disneyland.”
Hearing him,
Benny let out a whoop of excitement, and Molly’s eyes shone like stars. Douglas
held up a hand for silence.
“But we’re not
staying late,” he warned them. “I’m not fighting this kind of traffic on a
Monday morning. We’ll leave Disneyland before it gets dark so we'll be well out
of the city before we find a motel for the night. No arguments when I say it's
time to leave. Agreed?”
He noted with
amusement that Jacinth joined in with Benny in assuring him that was fine,
while Molly nodded her head vigorously, the curly blond bangs flopping in her
eyes. She was so adorable, he wanted to scoop her in his arms and hold her
tight. His chest constricted, and his eyes stung a little as he looked at his
kids. He loved them both so much.
“I owe you,” he
told Jacinth, his voice hoarse with the emotion he couldn’t suppress. “I owe
you a lot. There’s nothing in the world that means as much as my kids.”
About
the Author:
A former career medical
transcriptionist and disabled Veteran, Allie McCormack is now writing from home
full-time. Allie has traveled quite a bit and lived many places all over the
U.S., and also a year in Cairo, Egypt as an exchange student, and a year in
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia under contract to a hospital there, plus a short stint
with NATO while she was in the Army. As a single mom, she raised a wonderful
daughter who's recently married and there are plans afoot for grandchildren.
Allie now lives in the beautiful Sorona Desert in southern Arizona with her two
rescue cats and writes full-time.
Allie says: "A writer is who
and what I am... a romance writer. I write what I know, and what I know is
romance. Dozens of story lines and literally hundreds of characters live and
breathe within the not-so-narrow confines of my imagination, and it is my joy
and privilege to bring them to life, to share them with others by writing their
stories."
Website: www.alliemccormack.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AllieMcCormackK
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alliemccormackk/
Newsletter Sign-Up: http://alliemccormack.com/newslettersignup.html
YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoIbsZQXuAKXZrPg9htD0dg/videos
Amazon Author Page:
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