Some recipes don’t photograph as good as they taste, and this delicious prawn biryani proves the point. It’s taken from the market kitchen cookbook  – a programme that I’ve never watched but the book was given to me by the mother-in-law and it’s got some pretty tasty recipes in it.

This particular curry is a non-conventional biryani from the very beautiful Anjum Anand. She states in the book ‘traditionally biryani is a baked dish, but this recipe is all prepared on the hob.’ So, having fired up the oven to the obligatory gas mark 5, it’s quickly turned off again in favour of the hob.

Anjum’s recipe challenged my spice cupboard to the max, with a heady mix of cumin, coriander, cardamom pods, dried chillies, cinnamon, peppercorns, and cloves combined with ginger, garlic, creamed coconut, onions, tomatoes and prawns to make the curry. While the rice has an almost equally long list of ingredients to contend with.

Once cooked you pile the half the rice into a dish, next comes the curry sauce over the the rice, and then comes the other half of the rice, covering the curry. The whole dish is then topped with crispy onions and a small dose of saffron infused milk. While my photo doesn’t do it justice, it tastes absolutely devine and the husband was the envy of the staff-room when he took leftovers to work the next day.

The verdict from the cook: ‘While it’s a bit fiddly to make due to the endless list of ingredients, it hasn’t put me off making it again.’