What did you cook or eat today (April 2025)?

Ham, Leek, onion, gruyere quiche with a phyllo crust.
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Most recent attempt at UK curry house-style biryani and I think it was quite successful. Seems the way most UK restaurants do it is basically as a sort of quick fried rice rather than the more drawn out 'authentic' recipes which give it the taste drunks up and down the country are used to.

I followed along with instructions from this chap:


Look at those colours...

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Served with some chicken curry:

IMG_2972.jpg


I think I'd better not make any more attempts for a couple of weeks. We've had biryani of various qualities 3 times in the past week and a half and I think my wife's getting a bit tired of it (I could eat it everyday though).
 
vernplum said:
Most recent attempt at UK curry house-style biryani and I think it was quite successful. Seems the way most UK restaurants do it is basically as a sort of quick fried rice rather than the more drawn out 'authentic' recipes which give it the taste drunks up and down the country are used to.

I followed along with instructions from this chap:


Look at those colours...

View attachment 127909

Served with some chicken curry:

View attachment 127910

I think I'd better not make any more attempts for a couple of weeks. We've had biryani of various qualities 3 times in the past week and a half and I think my wife's getting a bit tired of it (I could eat it everyday though).
Click to expand...
That's great thank you.
My family are always requesting biryani. I make a lot of it up as I go along so the results are inconsistent.
I didn't know BIR (British Indian Restaurant) was a thing. It's quite refreshing to think of it as a subsection in it's own right rather than maligned as inauthentic!

I wouldn't be putting that garlic in as early as he did and I would rather bake/fry/BBQ smaller chunks of chicken but he explains the rice component well.

I like his unapologetic method and even his 'Saturday night out with my mates' old school three stripe polo shirt.

That jumbo size pan looks rather useful too!

Another Cheers Moss! You seem to be accumulating a lot of those recently :laugh:
 
SandwichShortOfAPicnic said:
That's great thank you.
My family are always requesting biryani. I make a lot of it up as I go along so the results are inconsistent.
I didn't know BIR (British Indian Restaurant) was a thing. It's quite refreshing to think of it as a subsection in it's own right rather than maligned as inauthentic!

I wouldn't be putting that garlic in as early as he did and I would rather bake/fry/BBQ smaller chunks of chicken but he explains the rice component well.

I like his unapologetic method and even his 'Saturday night out with my mates' old school three stripe polo shirt.

That jumbo size pan looks rather useful too!

Another Cheers Moss! You seem to be accumulating a lot of those recently :laugh:
Click to expand...

Welcome. Do try it - it works well.

Yes - there's a cadre of BIR enthusiasts who are going round trying to recreate the UK curry house taste at home with some prominent YouTubers and authors, Al (from his Kitchen) being one of them, along with Misty Ricardo, The Curry Guy, Latif's Kitchen and so on. BIR differs from 'authentic' Indian cooking in that it uses a lot of batch and pre-cooking which restaurants depend upon in order to get orders out quickly, and this imbues 'that taste' we get in those establishments. It's a bit of an obsession of mine.

Re: garlic: I also should have known better and as soon as I tipped it in I was like 'ah, I should not have done that!'. Some of the bits came out blackened, albeit still edible.

I like Al; I like his style. He has a Stella beer pump in the kitchen! Where I'm from (south London) a lot of my mates talk like him. To people not from the UK (and even Brits not used to various Southern accents) it seems a bit purposely exaggerated, but that is actually a genuine accent as you know!

That pan looks good. Moss admits to having Googled it to see how much it was...
 
vernplum said:
Yes - there's a cadre of BIR enthusiasts who are going round trying to recreate the UK curry house taste at home with some prominent YouTubers and authors, Al (from his Kitchen) being one of them, along with Misty Ricardo, The Curry Guy, Latif's Kitchen and so on. BIR differs from 'authentic' Indian cooking in that it uses a lot of batch and pre-cooking which restaurants depend upon in order to get orders out quickly, and this imbues 'that taste' we get in those establishments. It's a bit of an obsession of mine.
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Great obsession. I told Mr SSOAP at our scheduled coffee stop and I only got as far as explaining what BIR stood for before he understood and said "Ah that's brilliant, I'm glad, there's a lot to be said for British-Indian food, I don't understand people's miserable attitude towards it"
No prizes for guessing what I'm gonna be watching when I get back 😆

vernplum said:
I like Al; I like his style. He has a Stella beer pump in the kitchen! Where I'm from (south London) a lot of my mates talk like him. To people not from the UK (and even Brits not used to various Southern accents) it seems a bit purposely exaggerated, but that is actually a genuine accent as you know!

That pan looks good. Moss
Click to expand...

It doesn't sound at all exaggerated to me.

Mockney accents with exaggerated mouth shapes and ridiculously elongated vowel sounds do my head in. I can spot a fake London accent or someone over egging the pie a million miles away.
Only twice have I been impressed with the subtlety of an actors cockney accent - Gary Oldman and Tom Hardy, Mr SSOAP found that hilarious what with them being Londoners 🙄😆

But then my mum and dad are from London and we lived in Edgware when I was small until we moved to the West Country so I know what the real mccoy sounds like.

Damn the pesky garlic. I too occasionally follow the instructions without thinking and throw in an ingredient even though I know better, it's always an 'Oh damn' moment while you look on considering if you can or even want to pick it all out 😆

vernplum said:
Moss admits to having Googled it to see how much it was...
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...you're not alone Moss, it's already in my basket 😬 😆
 
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