Last night we had a pakistani dinner in my home. It has been so long since someone cooked Pakistani food in my kitchen! As I hired a pakistani assistant for August (actually he is the substitute for my two personal assistants which are on holiday) I asked him to cook Biryani rice and then I invited some friends for dinner. So, in the morning I had gone to buy all ingredients for the recipe: tomatoes, basmati rice, ginger, lemons and onions as well. You know, I don’t like onions, but when I told it to Israr he was really astonished and he explained how much important they are in the pakistani recipes…so, I had to surrender and to put them on the shopping cart. “Ok, let’s go! We have all ingredients!” I was so excited! Unfortunately, I forgot to tell Israr that I hate garlic: do you imagine what means for a pakistani chef cooking without garlic? It’s like talking without miming for an Italian!

Biryani is a mixed rice dish from the Indian subcontinent. Chicken Biryani is one of the most popular biryani dishes. There are numerous variations and regional specialities of the Chicken Biryani.

At the end, I finally convinced him to cook without that precious ingredient.

By the way, we came back to home, after drinking a cold green tea at the pub.  I couldn’t remember how much time the preparation takes – if you are not fond of cooking, you ought to know it takes 2 hours… – so when the friends came we had just started to cook!

They were hungry, so I suddenly told them:” I’ve two news, one bad and one good. The bad one is we are going to eat in 2 hours, the good one is that you came in time to help us…”  Well, I guessed that they would have moved from hungry to angry, but nobody complained. One started to cut tomatoes, another one to cut lemon into slices. So, drinking a glass of wine and smoking a cigarette, they helped us.

To be honest, we also nibbled at appetizers while the rice was steaming into the pan, however when we sit around the table they appreciated Biryani as much as they went for the seconds!

I’m going to have a pakistani dinner very soon, but this time we start to cook in advance…