Prawns / Chemmeen Biryani

My mom prepared this biryani. This is for my reader DivyaNair, who requested prawns biryani recipe.(Enjoy Divya!) Actually I thought to post this later after getting a good photo.Mom used some other biryani rice instead of basmati. (There are varieties of rices for biryani, here the rice used is not the usual long grained one.)
I hope you all might have known that kerals.com and tastyland blogspot.com have copied many of blogger's food photoes including salkkaaram's. I too had requested them to remove those pictures but didn't get a response yet. Please do notify us bloggers when you see any of our recipes or pictures in other websites.That would be very helpful.



Ingredients for making chemmeen biriyani
Prawns 1 1/2 cups
basmati rice or biryani rice 3 cups
onions 6
tomatoes 3
garlic paste 2 Tbspoons
ginger paste 2 Tbspoons
green chilly crushed 4
pepper powder 3 tsp
chilli powder as desired
turmeric powder 1/2 tsp
coriander leaves 1 cup chopped
mint leaves 1/4 cup chopped
coconut milk thick 1 1/2 cups
curd 1/2 cup
ghee or oil 2 Tbsps
lime juice 2 tsps
garam masala powder 1 1/2 tsp

for marinating prawns,
chilli powder 3 or 4 tsps
turmeric powder 2 tsps
fennel seeds powder 1/2 tsp
garlic and ginger paste 2 tsps
garam masala little
salt



How to prepare
Heat enough ghee or oil in a frying pan and fry the marinated prawns in that.Remove it from the pan when it is done and keep aside.

Heat a heavy bottomed vessel and pour ghee or oil. Add the oil or ghee remained after frying prawns too.Saute chopped onions in that. When it is reached transparency, add garlic-ginger paste, chilli paste and saute again for few seconds. Add chopped tomatoes, all the powders, salt, and cook for few minutes by stirring occasionally. Again add chopped coriander and mint leaves, saute them too. Add curd and mix well.Then add coconutmilk and when it begins to boil, put the fried prawns in to that and boil for few minutes. Let the masala turn thick.Check salt.Remove from fire.

Boil water.Put 2 cardamoms, 2 cloves, 2 pieces of cinnamon sticks of 1" length and salt in to it. If you like yellow color biriyani add little turmeric powder also.Cook rice in this and drain water when it is about done.(you can make ghee rice instead of this).

Heat a heavy bottomed or nonstick vessel again, pour little ghee. Remove it from fire. Put about 2 plates of rice. Spread little lemon juice and ghee over it. If you like, use little saffron mixed with milk too. Then spread some prawns masala over it evenly. Again put rice over it and repeat the process until the rice and masala are over. Cover the vessel tightly with the lid, (cover with aluminium foil before you place lid) keep on a low flame for about 10 minutes and remove.(You can see steam comes on top if you open lid a little) Mix well after half hour and keep it like that for a while before you serve.You can add fried onions, ghee roasted cashews , raisins, coriander leaves and mint leaves in between layers.

Have this biryani with pudina chammanthi , curd and pickle.