Lee, I'm glad you liked it; your Biryani rice sounds mouthwatering! I usually add more saffron (love it!), cinnamon and nutmeg, but go light on the peppercorns (I ate one by mistake once and I swear the thing tried to kill all the nerves in my nose LOL). Also I don't really crack the cardamom pods, I'm sure the seeds are really intelligent, they jump right onto the spoon to get in your mouth :(

As for the soup, I'd soak the toor dal (after washing it thoroughly), add 1/4t asafoetida and the other stuff and pressure cook.

That pinch of asafoetida at the end of the 'tadka'(tempering) is perfect! I wouldn't crack the cardamom pods (you know why now!), but it's really a personal choice, cracked pods would release a better flavour for sure.

I'm not very familiar with cayenne pepper, so don't know how spicy it is, but you could try soaking a whole dry red chilli in warm water for say 15-20 mins and add (before onions) in the tempering (be sure to duck behind something to save yourself from the hissyfit that the skillet will throw!), let fry for some time before the onions go in. Frying it a bit ensures that it doesn't keep leaching out all that spice when the tempering is added to the toor and sweet potato pot. If it's not spicy enough, you could always season with cayenne at the end.

Must make this soon, dal and sweet potato are absolute favourites of mine! Let us know how it turns out! Oh, and I forgot to ask, did you make curry to go with the biryani rice? I like it with any meat curry.

Anytime you need a recipe for Indian food, just write to me, I'll be glad to post it for you.

Pranjal

Lee? After you make that, will you give a review? It sounds great. (Wonder if it would freeze?)

Thanks Pranjal for the asafoetida advice. I'll soak the toor dal and add the asafoetida as you suggested. Cayenne pepper is a fairly hot ground pepper. I will probably use coarsely ground Korean red pepper which I like a lot. I also have a variety of dried whole chiles.

We had the Biryani Rice with fish, tilapia - a small, firm white fish that has a very mild flavor. I baked three filets, two for our dinner and one for my lunch the next day, in about a cup of coconut milk. I stirred about a teaspoon of Garam Masala (a very special one that was a gift from a friend). It is a family masala from her relatives in India - that I just love, it has more cinnamon than the Garam Masalas that I have purchased and undertones of spices that I don't recognize. Along with the Garam Masala, I added the zest of one lime and a little lime juice and some hot red pepper and a little salt. The tilapia baked in about ten minutes in a 425° oven. We also had sauteed chard.

Renee, I am making this for a late lunch today and I will certainly let you know what I think, I'm hoping it will be good because I am doubling the recipe so I have some to freeze. I'm sure it will freeze well.

Pranjal, I would love it if you would post a favorite meat curry recipe, chicken, lamb, or anything!

I'll be back later today with an update on the soup.

Lee

Lee...what a great little thread. I don't know what you mean by an insert in the pressure cooker? I've never done anything that way.

Ok Pranjal...how about YOUR favorite garam masala blend? I make my own on occasion but so far have no special one I love. Maureen

Maureen, these are the insert pans. I can use two or all three together in either my 7 liter Fagor PC or Brockley's new 8 qt electric PC. (It's called Brockley's PC because I justified it by how easy it would be to make Brockley's dog food in it - large quantity, push a couple of buttons and walk away). I love it.

I can also use one or two of the pans without the holding rack in my 4 liter PC and one pan in my 3 liter PC. In the smaller pans I use the inserts without the holding rack. The inserts each hold 7 cups but you would not use them totally full, probably not more than four cups in each. They are great for dals, rices and steal cut oats - no boil over. I love them and use them a lot. Of course you can cook different things in each pan as long as they have somewhat similar cooking times, putting what would take the longest on the bottom. You put water in the large pan and some liquid in each of the inserts. I looked for these at all of the Indian markets here but finally found them outside of Dallas. They come in all sizes for various pressure cookers. They are stainless steel. The pans and the rack were a set, the top was separate. Everything was less than $15.00.

The soup was finished so late in the afternoon that it became an early dinner! I started with washed toor dal that I soaked for about six hours.

Then the dal, peeled and chunked sweet potatoes, chicken broth, cracked cardamom and asafoetida went into the PC.

It cooked for nine minutes under high pressure.

While it was cooking I chopped onions and sauteed them, and then tempered the spices in a T of Grapeseed oil and a T of ghee.

After the PC stopped I let the pressure release for about five minutes naturally and then pushed the quick release button. The dal and the sweet potatoes were cooked to a soft stage and I blitzed through them in the pan with a stick blender to smooth them out, I left a few small chunks of sweet potato for texture.

The tempered spices were stirred into the onion and cooked together for a few minutes and then stirred into the soup.

The purchased Parathas were really good - this is the first time I have tried them.

Mine looked as good as the photo on the package.

And dinner was served.

The soup was the consistency of a thick pea soup, flavorful with the cardamom and masala and red pepper. It needed more spice than the recipe called for and I did add more. I saved a little of the spiced onions to add with the cilantro as a garnish and next time I would make extra onions to do this. The squeeze of lemon at the end definitely made the flavor lively.

Pranjal, thank you for your help and please do come back with some of your favorites too - a meat curry and a masala if you can. I know that some of the spices in Manisha's family masala are not available here but sometimes we have connections to India to get a few things.

Lee

Wow! I love the pics! Just looking at those makes me soooo hungry! Your paratha looks better than the pic on the package. Lee, those insert pans look neat; Mum has a set, but I just use any steel vessel that fits into the cooker. Did you make enough soup to freeze some for later?

I like the colour of Manisha's family masala, it doesn't look too spicy, (but I know looks can be terribly deceiving)... the one that my dad's side uses, is bright red, but not very spicy (Indian standards :D) and it has over 30 spices LOL - when I visit India Mum packs a big box of that for me. Gran said there are three kinds of red chilli alone in that, and one year she decided to make it at our house; it was fun - some spices were roasted (the roasting chillies made me run out of the house for a while), some were just put out in the sun to dry; finally in the morning the mix was hauled off in 20kg bags to the mill for powdering (this was to last an entire year for us and Dad's two brothers' families). Early morning, because Gran said that the masala must be done when the millstones are clean, so that the flavour is exactly as it should be, no contamination.

I'll post a meat curry recipe in a fresh post now.

Pranjal

Great tutorial Lee...and I like the clear text on the photos. Cute font. Those inserts are new to me, but very much like the Chinese steamer things. I do mourn my stick blender's demise...it was a handy gadget.

I'll have to look for those parathas next time I'm in one of our Indian shops, which are in the DC area as well as some asafoetida. I've never used the latter tho I've read of it in many recipes.

I'm not sure the soup would be a hit with Dick if he knew the contents but as a starter, I think he'd like it; I know I would.

pranjal, can you ask your Gran to give us a 1 cup version!!! Just teasing... Maureen

Awww Maureen, you brought a smile to my face! If Gran were still with us, I would've got to learn so many of those culinary secrets she knew. One of her close friends passed away last week; I imagine them sitting up there and gossiping away to glory.

Gran would be thrilled if she knew her masala was being discussed over the Net LOL