Chicken and rosewater biryani

I’ve made this Rick Stein special a few times and just love it. It has fragrant flavours from saffron, rosewater and cardamom, which are my absolute favourite flavours and it tastes like Indian food too – like actual food you might eat in India, albeit somewhere posh in Mumbai, which is a life’s work to find in the UK.

Also, and this is not specific to this biryani, but the second best thing about this is the crunchy rice that forms on the bottom of the dish, all buttery from the ghee. When else is hard rice ever acceptable?

This does take a while to cook but I’ve wanted to make it for so long since I’ve started eating meat again that I gave in and spent my Monday evening cooking. Perfect timing because it’s been cold and miserable outside all day.

When I make this again I’ll make sure that there is more chicken inside (because I’m greedy) and there are more than 2 of us for dinner – it can feed 6 easily!