Thinking about what to make for all the three meals of the day can be tiring. Ask someone who is in charge of cooking at home. It might not be such a hassle if you were just given the ingredients and asked to prepare a dish in a particular way. My mother tends to attract most of her frustration from the fact that she cannot think of what to make for breakfast, lunch or dinner. While breakfast is still manageable since everyone is in a rush to head to work, lunch is the time of getting together on the table to eat. To fuel up before the after-lunch work, you need something satiating and filling.
One-pot dishes work wonders in this regard. They are easier to make because all you have to do is put together all the ingredients in a pot and let it cook on slow flame. There’s khichdi, the lavish biryani and then there’s the mid-path, pulao. While there are many stories around how pulao was a predecessor of biryani, one thing we surely know is that pulao is slightly easier to make than the elaborate biryani. However, you wouldn’t want to compromise on taste so we have fetched a chicken pulao from the Kashmiri kitchens for you.
Kashmiri cuisine is well-known for its luscious and rich curries, dunked with chicken and mutton in most cases. They also have their own specialty of seafood, particularly fish and the vegetables feature much later in the list. Meat-intensive diets are conducive to the weather conditions and topography of Kashmir and therefore, you have yakhni, rista, gushtaba and plenty of meaty delights. Another thing that dominates the traditional Kashmiri meal is rice.
The abundant growth of rice-based crops in the region make it a staple part of daily meals. Most curries are served with a bowl of steamed rice. To make your task of lunch easier, we’ve got the two most intrinsic elements of Kashmiri cuisine together in a bowl as Kashmiri chicken pulao. For those untouched by the phenomenon, Kashmiri chicken pulao is a rice-based dish wherein the long-grain rice is cooked along with the meat (chicken in this case) as well as the spices. What makes it different from biryani is the fact that it is not layered but mixed together and cooked in a pot.
The aromatic and flavourful rice is guaranteed along with succulent pieces of chicken thrown into it, lending the rice a distinct meaty touch. The Kashmiri pulao also stand apart from regular pulaos because of the mild sweetness that it carries. From dried fruits to nuts, the pulao is loaded with rich and decadent ingredients that add to its flavour. Often times, you will find freshly chopped fruits donning the top of the Kashmiri pulao and as you dig in, cashews, raisins and pistachios find a place on your tongue.
The pulao is typically served with a raita, filled with chopped tomatoes and onions. Another side dish is the lauki raita where bottle gourd is sliced into the yoghurt mix. If you wish to add a tinge of sweetness, mangoes and pomegranates can also be dunked into the bowl.
