Parda Biryani! What a name isn’t? What is Parda Biryani? Is it just a gimmick for just another type of Biryani?
‘Parda’ in Hindi means ‘veil’ whereas biryani is a delicious medley of succulent vegetables, spices and flavourful basmati rice. Biryani stands or falls on the fluffiness of its rice as every grain should be separate and perfectly cooked. Please do not be fooled by people who pass off vegetable pulao as biryani. There is a huge difference between pulao and biryani. The main difference is that while preparing biryani, the rice is par boiled in water and then drained whereas while preparing pulao, the water is completely absorbed by the rice and vegetables in the dish. Also, a biryani is traditionally layered almost like a lasagne and then cooked, sealed in a pan.
My whole family is a real foodie and we plan our day around food almost every day. On special occasions like birthday or anniversary it is a real feast! I am not even talking about festivals as then we have a mega feast! So, I wanted to make something special for my parents’ anniversary. Biryani is my fathers’ one of the favourite dishes and my mum really enjoys a crispy naan with dal makhani. So, I thought of combining the three! I researched a lot and found lots of different recipes and during the research the idea of ‘parda biryani’ came to me.
So, parda biryani basically means when biryani is cooked inside a dome which is made of naan. So, you cook the naan and biryani at the same time. Have I confused you? Well! I can almost imagine your expressions as when I told my husband about the idea, he looked at me as if I was mad!
I could feel everyone’s eyes on me that day when I was preparing this dish. However, everyone was in awe when I served parda biryani for dinner. My parents were soo happy and told me that it was the best anniversary present. I always think food brings joy to life and that day I felt elated and felt proud too for making the day extra special for my parents.
Life is too short to be eating mundane food!
Parda Biryani goes well with Vegetable Raita, Aloo Raita, Boondi Raita or Hyderabadi Mirchi ka Salan.
It’s an amazingly superb recipe!!!!! I had made this on mu husband’s birthday…n everyone went WOWW!!!!! Cooking this is as exciting as relishing this awesome recipe!!!! Thank u sooo much ##FOODIETRAIL 🙂