Each family has a soya chunks-hater – those ubiquitous brown pieces of processed soy that end up in your meal every once in a while. In mine, it was me. I could neither appreciate their wooden texture nor could I enjoy whatever flavour they absorbed. Either way, they appeared pointless.
But my partner Nishil is eternally in love with soya chunks. He is from a household that savours them; when he was growing up, his mother often made these for sides, marinating them in spices overnight and roasting them the next day.
We needed to work around this and thus came this biryani. After all, when one gets a soya chunk craving, the other cannot pretend not to have heard it. No, it’s not our innovation – it is a word that can safely be set aside in the world of recipe creation, I suppose, for every conceivable combination is tried and tested upon by someone in some corner of the world. But we discovered it can be made in less than half an hour. What’s more, it will even change the way you see or eat soya chunks.
Soya Chunks Biryani
Ingredients (serves 2)
1 cup basmati rice
2 cups soya chunks
2 big onions
3 medium tomatoes
1 tsp ginger-garlic paste
4 tbsp curd
2 tsp red chilli powder
Handful of mint leaves
1/2 bunch coriander leaves
2 tbsp biryani masala (If you prefer to go the long way like me and use individual spices, go ahead)
3 bay leaves
2 cloves
Ghee according to your usage (more, the better obviously)
Salt to taste
Method
1 The first step is to prepare the soya chunks. No big deal, just soak them in hot water for 5 minutes.
2 Boil basmati rice with 2 cups of water along with a bay leaf and cloves. Cook it only for 5 to 7 minutes and drain the rice when it is slightly under done. It cooks further in the gravy that you will prepare.
3 Heat ghee in a heavy-bottomed pan (or pressure cooker), throw in the bay leaf and sauté onion on a high flame. Add ginger-garlic paste. When the onion starts to caramelise, add chopped tomatoes and stir further.
4 Add biryani masala, red chilli powder and stir in for a few minutes. Add curd and mix well.
5 Squeeze the soya chunks to get rid of excess water and add to the pan. Check that the masala is cooked well and there is no raw taste.
6 At this stage, depending on the time you have in hand, you could either layer the biryani or mix it together and prepare a homogeneous version. For layering, start with the gravy in another vessel, and alternate with the rice, mixing in the mint and coriander leaves. Else, mix in the rice nicely so the gravy is distributed evenly.
7 Let the covered pan or pressure cooker sit on the stove for 3 to 5 minutes until the gravy is well absorbed. Remove and serve with raita.
Prathap is a freelance writer who lives in Bangalore with his partner and a turtle. He recently quit his fulltime job to focus on his food and travel writing career. He blogs at>www.backyardbasil.blogspot.in
