Indian biryani curry paste gets a little Tex-Mex help in firing up spicy Biryani Chicken Breasts with a side of Coconut Rice Pilaf. Recipes below.
THIS IS AN EXCITING TIME FOR FOOD. There are more options now than ever before, from global grazing to eating local. And palates are more adventurous than ever before, as the minds and mouths of diners open up to cuisines and flavors from just about everywhere. The success of the Travel Channel’s Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations is a perfect example of this growing culinary curiosity.
Another example is how exotic ingredients are finding their way into our supermarkets and pantries and cooking. Americans are particularly talented borrowers. A flavor discovered in an ethnic restaurant will send us shopping for ingredients and scouring cookbooks and websites for ways to use them.
We’re also great tinkerers. We think nothing of using ingredients for traditional dishes in decidedly untraditional ways. For instance, the traditional East Indian food dish known as Biryani usually consists of meat, poultry, seafood, fruit or vegetables sandwiched between layers of aromatic saffron rice, then baked slowly in a closed pot. The ingredients of biryani paste vary widely—it is made by grinding spices such as coriander, turmeric, cumin, cardamom, chile, salt, pepper, garlic and cinnamon together with oil. The result is a gritty, oily paste which can be mixed with the foods used in the biryani.
My so-called Biryani Chicken Breasts break completely with this traditional preparation. They also use store-bought biryani paste, a quick convenience many traditional Indian cooks would frown upon, I’m sure.
And that’s just for starters. Next, I throw in some Tex-Mex tomatoes from Dallas, Texas, for added tangy heat. Hence two continents, one plate. But the results are delicious! And the first time I cooked the rice side dish, older daughter Claire proclaimed that our kitchen smelled “just like Swetha’s kitchen”—a school friend from India. I took that as a compliment.
Biryani Chicken Breasts with Coconut Rice Pilaf
Ingredients
For chicken
- 4 skinless boneless chicken breasts, about 1/3 pound or so each
- salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
- 1 tablespoon butter divided
- 1 tablespoon olive oil divided
- 1 medium yellow onion sliced
- 1 clove garlic minced
- 1 can (8 to 10 ounces) diced tomatoes with green chilies (see Kitchen Notes)
- 1 tablespoon Biryani Curry Paste (see Kitchen Notes)
For rice
- 1 cup long grain rice [see Kitchen Notes]
- 1-1/2 cups water
- 1/2 cup coconut milk, light or regular (see Kitchen Notes)
- salt to taste
- 1 teaspoon ground cumin
- 1/4 cup dried currants
- 1 tablespoon rice vinegar
- 1/4 teaspoon red cayenne pepper or to taste
Instructions
- Pat chicken breasts dry with paper towel. Salt and pepper them. Heat a large sauté pan over a medium high flame, add half the butter and olive oil and swirl the pan to combine. Add chicken and brown on both sides, 4 or 5 minutes per side. Transfer to plate.
- Reduce heat to medium and add remaining butter and olive oil to pan. Add onion and cook ’til softened, about 5 minutes, stirring often to avoid browning. Stir in garlic and cook until fragrant, about 45 seconds. Add diced tomatoes and biryani paste, stirring thoroughly to combine. Return chicken breasts to pan along with any juices. Cover and cook until chicken is cooked through, about 5 to 7 minutes. Turn off heat.
- Transfer chicken breasts to cutting board, one at a time, and slice across the grain into 3/4-inch slices. Arrange on plates with Coconut Rice Pilaf. Spoon tomato sauce over chicken—and rice, if desired.
- Meanwhile, cook the rice. Combine rice, water, coconut milk and salt in a sauce pan. Bring to boil over high heat. Stir in cumin, reduce heat to low and cover pan. Cook until rice is done, about 15 minutes. Stir in currants, rice vinegar and cayenne pepper. Serve.
Kitchen Notes
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This looks great and I can imagine the wonderful smell too!
I’m all for storebought condiments (or convenience foods) when they are of good quality, and give us an opportunity to explore new tastes in the kitchen. If you like this biryani paste some day you’ll want to try making your own — and then, of course, the balance of seasonings will be just to your liking. Great post — yes, we are wonderful borrowers in the kitchen!
One of the (many, many) things I love about foodblogging is that I am always learning something new!
Biryani is something I have never seen/heard of, Terry, but your dish looks so delicious!
And rice… well, we are a nation of rice lovers, so I would love this, for sure.
I love this Biryani curry paste. I just bought a cookbook called Meena Pathak Celebrates Indian Cooking, written by the daughter in law of the Pathak family (they spell the name Patak on the products, not sure why.) Anyway, it’s a book about using traditional Indian cooking methods combined with using Pataks convenience products. Since I’m rather intimidated by a lot of Indian recipes, I’m loving the book.
I just saw No Reservations on Monday night for the first time..I’m hooked. Also, can I apply for Bourdain’s job? He has it made.
Anali—Thanks! Yes, the cooking smells are great, especially with the rice. And in my household, we all are great appreciators of food and cooking smells. Very rewarding when you’re cooking.
Lydia—Store-bought shortcuts are great for helping us all get into the kitchen more often, especially during the week. A favorite of mine is canned beans—a real time saver without sacrificing too much in the way of quality.
Patricia—Learning new food ideas and meeting new people are two wonderful things about food blogging to me. Do try the rice. You may want to start with a little less cayenne pepper—I know Joao is not a huge fan of spicy.
Kalyn—That cookbook sounds fantastic. I will definitely have to try to find it. When we’re in the Indian grocery stores along Devon Avenue, we’re always fascinated by the dazzling array of these products. We also often have no idea what to do with them or which to pick next.
Andrea—If you haven’t already, read Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly. What a fabulous tale about life in restaurant kitchens and how he got there.
Hey, Terry. I really enjoy your blog!
I’ve done a fair amount of Indian cuisine in my time. When you listed out the ingredients for your biryani paste, you included “chili” (or, I guess it’s really “chile”, huh?) in the list.
I originally thought chile in Indian ingreds was chile like our chile powder but actually, it’s not. It’s a ground chile that’s akin to our CAYENNE pepper! Which, of course, will yield a completely different flavor!!!
Good call on adding Tex Mex ingredients, since almost all Tex Mex spices & herbs originate from India, anyway. Even cilantro.
My favorite Indian cuisine cookbook author is Madhur Jaffrey. She is a semi-famous actress in India turned cookbook author. Her biryani will knock your turban off.
Wow. Had to write again…this recipe looks just great. Really diggin the idea of coconut milk. The biryanis I’m familiar with call for yoghurt. But I can sort of taste that coconut…yum!
Try adding pistachios and/or sliced almonds next time.
Chef Chip—Thanks for the insights! You’re right, I meant to type chile. Good catch. It’s interesting that while Indian cuisine is all about spices, it’s not necessarily always about absolute heat [although I’ve had some fiery Indian foods too]. Regarding adding nuts to the rice dish, good call. The original recipe calls for 1/4 cup toasted chopped cashews. I don’t usually bother, so I left them out here—I’m a fan of nuts, particularly almonds, but this dish seemed to have plenty going on already.
Yeah, Terry. It depends what part of the country you’re cooking as to how much heat you’re gonna find. I believe it’s the northern cuisine that tends to be spicier (as in heat).
And they use nuts prodigiously. Almonds, cashews & pistachios. I’m not a big fan of cashews in dishes because they absorb too much moisture and lose their “crunch.”
When Indians (and Persians) have rice as a focal dish, they will spice it with some kind of garam masala (a mixture of various spices like what you listed, meaning “warm spices”), fried (nearly burnt) onions, toasted nuts and dried fruit. And usually some kind of fresh herb tossed in at the last moment, like cilantro, mint and/or dill.
Can’t tell that I like Indian food, can you?
Chef Chip—You’re quite knowledgeable about it too. Garam masala sees a fair amount of action in our kitchen, albeit usually in non-traditional “borrowings”—much as this recipe incorporated biryani paste. If you look in my March archives, you’ll find an oatmeal raisin cookie recipe that uses garam masala, for instance.
This is a fabulous post, Terry. I really enjoyed reading it, as this is a food philosophy that I really believe as well! I think it is really important to expand our horizons and food is one of the best and easiest ways to achieve that goal. A culture’s food says so much about the culture – from what is grown in the region to how people use similar ingredients in different ways. It is fascinating stuff! This is the beauty of fusion food and you have done a great job of it here!
Thanks, JennDZ! I agree about food being a great way to expand one’s horizons—a delicious way too. And while it’s fun to co-opt ingredients from various cultures as I’ve done here, I’m really excited to explore the cookbooks mentioned above by Kalyn and Chef Chip to maybe do something more authentic.
Another great place to explore cooking authentic Indian cuisine is Nupur’s excellent blog One Hot Stove:
http://www.onehotstove.blogspot.com/
Well now you’ve gone and done it. You’ve combined two of my favorite kinds of cooking – Indian and southwest. Wow! The chili peppers used in Indian food is, of course, a perfect lead-in to our southwest cooking, but it had never occurred to me to make this kind of a leap. As you know, I believe firmly in the virtue of tinkering, and this is about as good a job as I’ve seen. I came back from India with some dried Biryani spices, but have never bought the jars. (It’s that “I’ve got all these ingredients at home” thing…)
I think I’m beginning to smell that rice cooking on my stove!
Mmmm…the fragrance of the curry paste must have been fantastic. I love this combination of flavors, Terry, quite bold. I’ll have to look for this paste now. As for “No Reservations,” my husband has seen a couple of episodes and really liked it; I’ll have to check it out.
Terry,
Love this post! You’re right, this is such an exciting time for food! Food TV and the internet are turning more and more of us on to ingredients and cuisines that many of us had never even heard of 5-10 years ago.
TerryB, I love your eclectic tastes in both food and music. I used to sing Cole Porter and Rodgers and Hart standards in the kitchen, now I rely on my iTunes collection.
Wish I could find those ingredients on the tundra!
Toni—No wonder we both gravitate to both cuisines—according to Chef Chip’s first comment above, many of the spices found in of southwest or Tex-Mex cuisine originated in India. Reminds me of one of my favorite Steven Wright lines: “It’s a small world, but I wouldn’t want to have to paint it.”
Susan—Unfortunately, our home is a cable-free society [by choice], so I’ve never seen Bourdain’s show. I love his writing, though.
Nicole and Mimi—The Internet really is helping us explore the wide world of food. Other aspects of life too—it has had a major impact on our lives in more ways than we even know. And Mimi, not that I’m trying to spend your money, but the Internet is a great way to track down food items you can’t get locally.
Well I guess everyone has said it but I’ll say it again – Great Post! I’m loving trying to new ingredients and new foods at various ethnic restaurants. This dish looks fantastic and a great way to jazz up what can normally be boring chicken breasts.
Nice TerryB! One of my co-workers was given a bottle of that sauce that he didn’t want, so he gave it to another of my co-workers who didn’t want it, so she offered it to me but I didn’t want it because I didn’t want to carry it home, but now, NOW I think I will take that bottle of sauce and use it for a quick dinner some night! Thanks for the inspiration 🙂
Looks so delicious – I will be making that rice, I could almost smell its fragrance…hmmmm 🙂
Unbelievably good. Thanks for the Rotel tip!!!