wash chicken pieces properly, pat them dry.

Grind all the ingredients under “for grinding” section into a smooth paste. Put into the chicken and mix well. Marinate the chicken for at least one hour. The best would be to keep it overnight. If keeping overnight, leave it in the fridge and then bring it back to normal temperature before cooking.

Wash and soak the rice for 30 minutes. Drain and set aside.

In a pressure cooker, heat oil. Saute the onion till soft.

Then add the tomatoes and cook till mashed.

Now add the chicken along with its marinade. Check the salt.

Close the lid and cook for one whistle on high. Switch off and allow the pressure to go by itself.

Meanwhile, let us cook the rice. Heat water along with the whole masala's till it comes to a rolling boil.

Add the drained rice and salt and allow it to boil again. Now reduce the flame to the minimum and leave it untouched with a closed lid for 10-15 minutes till the water is totally evaporated and the rice is 90% cooked. Fluff it up and set aside.

In a frying pan, heat the oil and ghee. Fry the onion till brown. Set aside on a paper towel.

Fry the cashew nuts, puff up the raisins. Drain and keep along with the fried onion.

Now let’s start the dum process. Heat a chapathi tawa till it becomes hot and keep it on low flame. In a deep saucepan, put in the chicken masala.

Sprinkle half of the dum ingredients - fried onion, cashew, raisins, coriander and mint leaves and garam masala powder.

Put all the rice on top. Sprinkle the rest of the dum ingredients.

Now drizzle the fried oil-ghee and the rose water on top. Tightly cover with aluminium foil on the top and close the lid.

Keep on top of the hot chapathi tawa and keep the flame on high for 5 minutes. Lower to minimum and then leave it on for 15-20 minutes.

Switch off and allow the rice to rest for another 10 minutes.

Take off the lid and the foil. Mix with soft hands, using a ladle with a long handle to mix the rice and masala. Serve warm with some raita, pickle and papad!