Recipe for Bliss!

Recipe for Bliss!

Introduction:

Good Morning Toastmaster, hello members and Guests.

Imagine you are in your dream vacation spot. Say a great beach, with blue waters, the water is bluer than the sky. The sand is clean and white. Sea gulls flying around and making the chirping sound. You are also doing your most favorite hobby and your most favorite friend/spouse with you.

Imagine.  Your dream vacation spot, your dream hobby and your dream friend.

How would you explain that? ‘Bliss”?

For most of the people, it is not possible to spend time and money to afford such a vacation, more than a once in year, may be once or twice in a year.

Friends, I am going to share something with which all of us can afford to attain such blissful state anytime we want.

Queen of Indian Food:

Ladies and Gentleman, let me introduce you the, “queen of Indian food”, The Biriyani!.

How many of you like Indian food? If you like Indian food, Biriyani is one food which you should eat before you I die.

Briyani is made of best ingredient in each of its category like a dream football team formed with best players from each country. Each of the ingredients is the best in its category. In today’s session I am going to share three things, the Origin of Briyani, the ingredients of Biriyani and a simple recipe for cooking. In Briyani preparation, it is all about “Right Ingredients, Right consistency and Right passion”

It is one food with full of captivating colors, fascinating fragrance and a great mesmerizing aroma. If we cook Briyani here, the entire AT&T building will know that something great is in cooking.

Origin:

If I have to describe Briyani in one sentence, it is “Briyani is FOR love, OF love and By Love”

You may wonder how love is related to Briyani.  To understand this, I have to share you a love story, and we need to understand the origin of briyani for which we need to travel few thousand years back, particularly in 16^th century.

Those days, India used to be one the richest country with flourishing resources.

History always teaches us that whenever a country is rich with resources it will have invaders.

India was invaded by Moguls, Dutch, British etc and they ruled for more than 300 years.

Biriyani is not really an Indian dish. It was a dish brought by Moguls to India. In Persian, the word ‘brian’ means to fry before cook.

Coming back to our love story.

Those moguls time in India, the emperor was Shah Jahan , it was 16^th century.

How many of you have seen or heard of Taj Mahal. It is the one of the 7 wonders of the world.

It is a magnanimous structure built solely on ivory colored Marbles. Ladies and gentleman, just marbles.  Shah jahan built it to show his love for his beautiful wife, Mumtaz Mahal

If a husband is building a world famous monument for his wife, that girl should be really someone, special .

Mumtaz was as  beautiful as a fresh rose with dews on it, as per a poet. Her heart was so gracious that she treated everyone as

One day she and the king were taking a stroll along the palace . She sees the army men doing their daily drill.

Suddenly her face becomes grim and she stops. She was disappointed and dejected. She finds that most of the army men are very weak and later she finds that there is a lack of nutrition for them.

She could not sleep that day. She thinks about it repeatedly again and again like a stone that causes ripple on the lake when thrown.

She wanted to come up with a balanced  nutritious  food that is tasty and also can be prepared in bulk large quantity. She came up with the first recipe of Briyani. After that Biriyani became the royal food in Mogul courts.

After that the Briyani took many forms and changes as of now, there are 46 different varieties of Briyani, each with different color.

Ingredients:                   

One of the key mantra in Briyani cooking is, “Right Ingredients, Right Consistency and the right passion”

“Right Ingredient, Right Consistency and Right passion”

Let me take you to few of key ingredients.

The key ingredient in Biryani is the Saffron.  It is such a costly item, just few ounce will cost you 100s of dollars. In most of the restaurant, they may use colors instead of Saffron.

This Saffron gives a nice golden yellow color like a sunset yellow color to the briyani. More than the color, it gives a nice aromatic long lasting taste in your mouth even after every bite.

The second key ingredient is the Rice. Not just normal rice J

Basmati rice, which is the king of all rice varieties.  Basmati rice by default has a nice delicate fragrance. Even the uncooked basmati, gives out this nice aroma. Also, basmati rice is good for diabetes, as it has low glycolic index.

And there are list of additional whole spices, like Cloves, Mint, Bay leaves,  and These spices gives a nice sweet flavor to the meat.

More than the flavor and the taste , these spices have medicinal value.  In one of the oldest medicinal system , called Homeopathy, these spices are actually the medicines.

Oops, I missed one ingredient here, Any guess?

“:It is the Love and passion”. Remember, Cooking briyani is all about Right ingredients, right consistency and right passion.

Cooking:

Right ingredients, Right consistency that is the mantra. Right consistency means, it needs a very careful preparation.

The first step is marinating the meat. The meat needs to be marinated with the spices for about 6 hours.

Then the meat and the rice have to be cooked layer by layer in a dum style. Dum cooking means, cooking in a closed container in a slow and light heat and making use of the steam.

When you do the slow cooking, the juice from the meat gets mixed with the spices and spreads to the rice. Which makes the food delicious , flavorful and mouth watering.

To conclude,

In my view, everyone should eat Briyani at least once in their life time before death.

To show your love to your loved ones, next time, please cook this marvelous delicious food for them.

To end with this slide, whenever a US president visits India, one of the key foods we serve is Briyani, because we love US presidents.

Thank you.