Spiced Vegetable Biryani

Note: pic is taken with my phone, so not the usual quality. It looked more yellow than this.

BBC Good Food strikes again, and this time I was specifically looking for a curry of some sort. I saw this and it looked delicious. I'm so glad I don't have to type the recipe out, haha.

http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/1397/spiced-vegetable-biryani

I bought all the ingredients (quite expensive if you include some yoghurt, poppadoms and mango chutney) even though the recipe says it's for 6 people. I was curious to see how much it would make. Well believe it, it really is for 6. I had to leave out a good portion of veggies so it'd fit into my largest oven dish, and even then it went for 5 servings.

Making sure the rice is cooked is key here, so it's best to use a dish with a lid in addition to the foil trick. I cooked mine for 15 minutes to roast the veg, then another 35 minutes for the rice part. This cooked it beautifully, but I think it's definitely a trial and error thing.

Taste-wise it was lovely, a bit weak in the spices because my spoon didn't fit in the curry paste jar and I ended up estimating the size of a tablespoon. But looking beyond that and it would certainly make a fine dish. The veg takes quite some preparing, but it can be done whilst waiting for the oven to hear. Or, at least, the veg that goes in first.

I did find that the mustard seeds and thick spices collected in one place, but I'm not sure how to stop that. I did stir it a bit, but didn't have much room to give it a good mix, and by the time it was cooked they had all settled again anyway.

It's a good dish to make on the weekend; reheated it's just as good and you don't have to cook for a couple of nights if there are just 2 of you. It does need the condiments I added to give interest (i.e. the yoghurt etc) and some protein, Alternatively you could use some ready-done fake meat pieces added when serving.