Ondine Clark-Bonk

If you’ve ever tried to cook a new recipe you know nothing about with ingredients you virtually never use, you know that it’s not exactly easy.

This was the case when my mom, sibling and I embarked on a journey to make an Indian rice dish called biryani. We got the recipe from “One Pot Meals: 100 Recipes to Live to 100” and decided to make it over spring break.

Most of the spices were not in our stock, and definitely not things you would find at our local Walmart, so we went to the food co-op and collected small amounts of the needed spices from its extensive spice selection.

I made the rookie mistake of not writing down the amount of spices needed, so we kind of winged it. By midday, we began the cooking process, chopping tomatoes, cauliflower, carrots and onions (the onion stage held many tears).

My friend and fellow 8-18er Edith was going to come over, and I asked her if she wanted to help us make it. She said sure, and she and my sibling Vesper began measuring out all of the spices as I put the first half of the onions in the pot with some coconut oil and let them start to soften. Then we added the cashews and saffron.

The recipe did say to add raisins at this point as well, but we were not going to do that. I’m sorry! I’m generally against raisins at all unless they’re on their own.

I cooked the onion/saffron/cashew mixture for about five minutes until the cashews were browned, and then set it aside. This was the topping part of the dish.

Then I added some more coconut oil to the same pot along with the second half of the onions and all the spices. We cooked it until the spices were browned, then added the diced ginger and garlic. We then added the tomato we had diced, and if you’ve ever had to cut a tomato, you know it’s a little tough.

Next was putting all of the other vegetables we had tediously cut up into the pot. OK, fine, that’s hyperbole, I wouldn’t say we cut up all the veggies exactly tediously, maybe more hurriedly. We stirred up the tasty-smelling mixture, then put in yogurt, a bit of salt and half a cup of red lentils. We cooked this for a few minutes, then added the rice, spreading it out evenly just as the recipe instructed.

This is where I must be clear, so you don’t judge me. We followed the recipe to a T, I promise! What happened next was out of my control, I think! I guess you can never expect to have a perfect dish the first time you make it, but I don’t understand what I did wrong! Oh, well.

We poured exactly two cups of water mixed with bouillon over the rice, exactly as the recipe instructed. My mom went for a walk, leaving Edith and I in charge of cooking the biryani (possibly a mistake). We covered it and started a very intense game of Snakes of Wrath, a two-person tile-laying game, while we waited the 40 minutes until our biryani would be ready.

I was nervous, but I relaxed when I checked on it a little while later, and it looked tasty! Then, the timer went off. Edith and I hurried to the kitchen and lifted the pot lid. It looked good! From what we could see, all of the water had been absorbed, and it was cooked well!

But then … I grabbed a spoon and mixed it. It didn’t look good after I mixed it, I’ll say that much. The top layer of rice was overcooked and mushy, but the bottom layer was still hard and uncooked, and there was plenty of unabsorbed liquid in the pot.

Edith and I exchanged glances and began to mumble ideas of how to solve this. We put the lid back on and pretended that nothing had happened for a good five minutes until we called down Vesper to help us. The three of us said things like, “It would be fine, it looked OK, and if it’s edible, then it’s a win.”

So, we dished it up and ate it. By “ate it,” I mean we choked it down with unsure nods. The uncooked rice was hard and crunchy, and the vegetables were still a bit hard. We had finished dinner by the time my mom got home, and we told her the deal. She took a look and let’s just say that whole pot of food had gone somewhere by the end of the night. Now, it was pretty OK, taste-wise. It was just the confusing mixture of textures that threw us off.

That was my biryani journey! I hoped you enjoyed reading about my difficult experience with browning spices and cooking rice. I think I’ll try to make this recipe again someday, but first I need some time to recover.

Hopefully, this column inspires you to try a new recipe, even if it doesn’t turn out as you expect, because you’ll still have a lesson to learn and a funny story to tell!

Ondine Clark-Bonk, 12, has a passion for food, hockey and painting strange scenes. She is an old soul and only wears comfortable clothes.