Mushroom Biryani (With Coconut Milk)

Mushroom Biryani Cooked With Coconut Milk

Mushroom biryani is another variety rice recipe which is a good choice for any potlucks or for any get-together. One of my best buddy P makes the best mushroom biryani. My daughter likes her mushroom biryani. Hence, I have to make mushroom biryani equally good as my friend's.

I tried mushroom biryani with many variations. When I make mushroom biryani, I wanted it to be less spicy and still make mushrooms in the biryani not to smell like "mushroom" - that "watery" smell of mushrooms. Unless we bought very fresh mushrooms, you cannot help this "mushroom" smell of mushrooms even in the mushroom biryani. This is my personal opinion. Others doesn't seem to mind it.

But this mushroom biryani has no such smells and hence I too love it! The recipe is like any other biryani.

Try to get mushrooms as fresh as possible. I use button mushrooms - nice clean and white and fresh and smells like "good soil". Get ready with fresh mint and good coconut for milk.

Now let us see how you can bring all the awesome spices, herbs, mushroom and few vegetables together and cook them in a creamy coconut milk and yield an flavourful mushroom biryani on your plate.

Let's start..

Ingredients:

• Basmathi / Jeeraga samba rice - 2 cups
• Mushrooms - 400 grams
• Onion - 2 medium size
• Green chillies - 5
• Ginger - 1.5 inches (peeled)
• garlic cloves - 6 nos.
• Mint - 1 handful
• Coconut - half of a big coconut (approx. 2 cups of coconut milk)
• Cinnamon - 3 pieces
• Cardamom - 3
• Cloves - 3
• Lichen (kal paasi) - s small bits
• Bay leaves - 2
• Fennel seeds - 2 pinches
• Chilli powder - 1 teaspoon
• Coriander powder - 1 teaspoon
• Turmeric powder - 1/2 teaspoon
• Salt to taste
• Coriander leaves for flavour
• Oil - 4 tablespoon or more

Procedure:

• Grate or cut the coconut. Grind this in a mixer to extract the coconut milk. Extract the second milk too by running the coconut again in the mixer with little more water. The coconut milk is ready.
• Wash and cut the mushrooms into not-very-thin pieces and keep ready.
• Cut the onion, ginger, garlic and green chillies and transfer to a blender. make a paste. Keep aside.
• Now wash and soak the basmathi rice. (By the time you get ready with sauteing the other ingredients, it will be almost 30 mins soaking.) I prefer Jeeraga sambar rice as it has more flavour which contributes to the biryani. And these days, Basmathi rice has less flavour than jeeraga sambar rice for the same price.
• Heat oil in a pressure cooker.
• Add the cinnamon, cardamom, cloves, fennel seeds, bay leaves, lichen.
• Followed by onion-green chillies-ginger-garlic paste. 
• Saute till the raw smell of ginger garlic goes off.
• Add the chilli powder, coriander powder and turmeric powder and saute well till oil separates.
• Add the mint and chopped coriander leaves and stir well till mint wilts.
• Now add the mushroom pieces and stir well.
• Within few minutes the mushroom releases water. Keep the stove in high and stay near the cooker and keep stirring till all the water evaporates.
• Now add the coconut milk and water - total of 4 cups (2 cups coconut milk and 2 cups water).
• Add salt and check.
• Let this come to a rolling boil.
• Once it starts to boil, add the soaked rice and stir.
• Let it come to boil again.
• Once it starts to boil well, give a final stir and cover the cooker.
• When the steam is released from the cooker through the nozzle, just reduce the heat to low and leave it for 10 minutes without weight.
• After 10 minutes, turn off the stove and let it cool down a little.
• Open and stir gently to see the awesome and flavourful mushroom biryani perfectly cooked in the coconut milk.
• Garnish with coriander leaves. Serve hot with a simple onion raitha or just potato chips. 

Tips:

1. Wash basmathi rice just once.
2. Even the jeeraga samba rice will do absolutely good instead of basmathi rice.
3. Buy fresh and white button mushrooms. Avoid the ones with brown spots on them. You know when the mudrooms are old.
4. Wash the mushrooms on running water and let it dry a little bit before cutting as it would be slippery when wet.
5. Do not slice the mushrooms too finely. As they seem to be lost and disappear in the biryani.
6. The lichens and fennel seeds are optional. I like them in my mushroom biryani.
7. The coconut milk:water ratio can be adjusted as per the availability of coconut milk. If you have just a small coconut and you ought to get only 1 cup of coconut milk, its okay. Just add that one cup coconut milk and the rest 3 cups water. 
8. As I said earlier, I prefer simple onion/cucumber raitha or potato chips as side for this biryani. The spicy or heavy side dish gravies are not suitable for this biryani as it might over power the flavour of this or any other biryani in that case. 

Happy cooking !!