An aside in itself

I'm writing this post as I finish the rest of the meal and as the dishes are still sprawled on the table from dinner. That's how important this is.

Yes, that's a Subway napkin.

The thing I want to tell you about today is ludicrous, actually. It's really an aside in itself and should be relegated to an extremely long "Lisa footnote."* Because I'm not sure you would actually want to make the thing I'm going to spend most of this post talking about. I promise that at the end I will tell you about something you should make, but because I love to tell ridiculous stories, I'm going to make you sit through this first.

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My brain is always asking questions and generating weird ideas. (Strengthsfinder says that I'm "ideation." And "input." Gahh!) Often when I come up with what I think might be an original idea, I check the internetz to see if anyone else has thought of it before, and if so, whether it works. (These ideas could run the gamut of how to keep kitchen towels clean, has anyone ever cut holes out of a sleep sack to make it footed, how do you implement GTD as a homemaker--possibly using Excel. I would show you a screenshot of my search history, but that could be embarrassing.)

If I don't see my idea after a couple of Google searches, I assume that either (a) it's a very dumb idea, or (b) I'm an absolute genius. I'm not sure there are any other possible logical conclusions.

Today, among other things, I wanted to know if anyone has ever made chicken biryani in a rice cooker - without frying any part of it. Here are the permutations I searched:

"chicken biryani in rice cooker"

"chicken biryani in rice cooker no stovetop"

"no-fry chicken biryani"

"raw chicken in rice cooker"

"make chicken biryani without frying"

Alas, I found no meaningful results to my searches, so it was time put the idea - and me - to the test. I mean, if an amazing dish could be made decently well without very much work, wouldn't someone else have already made it??

Anyway, so whenever I'm trying to figure out if a "cheater" method works, I purposely do every step the laziest way possible. Because if I were to do one thing un-lazy - such as to sear the chicken first - and the rest of it the lazy way, I wouldn't be able to tell what caused the dish to work or not work. So in the name of the Scientific Method, I do everything like a bachelor. In this case, everything was thrown into the rice cooker - no stove time, and hardly any chopping.

I still used my brain, though, and marinated the chicken with salt and curry powder hours before I wanted to "set it and forget it."

Then, an hour and a half before dinnertime, I threw the following into the rice cooker: 3 cups Jasmine rice (unwashed, don't tell my mom!); water/chicken broth (to just under the correct level on the cooker; I'm not Asian enough to do the knuckle method, but you could definitely do that-- note: I add the water before the rest of the ingredients); 2.5 lbs chicken thighs/drums, marinated; a few slices of onion; 1 green chile, sliced in half lengthwise; 1 t each, ginger and garlic, minced; a bunch of turmeric (maybe 1-2 t?); 3 cloves; 3 cardamom pods, lightly crushed; 1/2 t whole black peppercorns; 1 t salt (if using water or unsalted broth).

I even threw in cilantro stems to "scent" the rice. So fancy.

And then I hit "start."

It turned out surprisingly well. The chicken was moist and the rice was flavorful, spicy. The only thing I would change is to use just slightly less water (it was a little sticky) because the other ingredients let out water, and to serve it with raita.

Verdict: Tasty, but I'm not sure I would call it biryani, lest your Indian great-grandmother roll over in her grave. But for a bachelor dinner that was ten times more delicious than it should have been, considering the work that went into it, A-plus.

I'm not posting a picture because biryani is not photogenic. (Even when it's made the real way.)

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Anyway, so like I said at the beginning of the post, I'm not sure this is worth your making, easy as it is. But for the morbidly curious, I had to tell you the results of my experiment. Now that you've read my long story, here's what you should make.

I have long loved the Five-minute Indian-style cabbage dish I wrote about once here. But today I had some wax and green beans from our CSA so I decided to sub them in. And I think they turned out even better than the cabbage version.

This rendition was of my own devising. It wasn't already on Google, so it must mean I'm brilliant.

Five-minute Indian spiced green beans

inspired by Herbivoracious 

1 lb green beans, trimmed, and cut into 1.5 inch lengths (I had a mixture of wax and green, from our CSA)

1 T black mustard seeds

1/2 t each, turmeric and cumin

a touch of cayenne if you're not serving a baby, too

3/4 t salt

Heat oil in a pan over high heat. Add mustard seeds and turn heat down to medium-high. As they pop, add spices and saute for 30 seconds. Then add beans and salt, and saute 1 minute, then add 1-2 T water/broth, and saute another 3-4 minutes until crisp-tender. 

P.S. Aaand the obligatory baby picture:

Blogger, why you gotta be so obnoxious? I hate when the photos don't turn. (David says, "Theo turns heads, so it's okay.")

P.P.S. A few randoms I have been saving for a post. I have been saving up to be thematic, but I guess that would be not-the-point of randoms.

• Have celery languishing in the fridge? Make this celery stir-fry. (I definitely think the word "languishing" was invented for celery. It's like the only thing it does. Languishes.)
• An article on decluttering. 
• Mexican polenta pie. Was maybe gonna blog about it... The filling as written was meh, but the concept of polenta and cheese melted over was worth sharing. 
• Making plans is difficult nowadays. Excuse the minor (albeit censored) profanity. My favorite line: "I wasn't expecting all this predictable rush hour traffic."
• Baked spaghetti. Do it. Way more than the sum of its parts. Definitely better made with refrigerated spaghetti (just like fried rice is). Throw in tomato bisque if your husband obtains you a free lunch at the hospital and you manage to have leftover soup.

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* I just named this a "Lisa footnote." In case you hadn't figured it out already.