Recipe question

I found a recipe for Braised Napa Cabbage Biryani on Food52. Like all biryanis it's composed of alternating layers of basmati rice and a spiced filling, in this case based on napa cabbage. This is a Parsi recipe. It looks pretty good, except for one aspect of the filling. These are the filling ingredients listed in the recipe:

1 medium napa cabbage, chopped
1 cup tomato paste
2 large onions, diced
1/4 cup olive oil
4 tablespoon ground turmeric
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground cardamom
1 tablespoon saffron tea (optional)
2-3 teaspoon pink salt
1 teaspoon ground black pepper

One cup of tomato paste?? That seems like an awful lot. I'm wondering if they meant tomato sauce.

Your thoughts?

-Paul W.

To how much rice? A nappa cabbage, even a medium one can be pretty big. It's not clearly wrong but that does seem like a very large amount.

2 cups raw basmati rice.

-Paul W.

So six cups cooked? Yeah, that seems like way, way too much tomato paste. I've never made biryani, for what it's worth.

[Jenise]

Or 1 tblsp tom paste. Even a cup of sauce seems like overkill. Do the directions not provide a clue?

You start by sauteeing the onion in olive oil until caramelized. Then add the tomato paste, cabbage, and spices and cook 15-20 minutes on low heat. Meanwhile you cook the rice most of the way, until al dente. Then you assemble the biryani: put 2 TBS olive oil on the bottom of the pot, a layer of rice over that, then a layer of the cabbage mixture, then alternating layers of rice and mixture for a total of six layers.

Then you cover the pot and allow it to steam over low heat for about an hour, until the rice on top is tender and fully cooked and the liquid is almost entirely absorbed. This is standard operating procedure for biryanis, and it's also the technique used in making jambalaya (although for a jambalaya the process only takes 1/2 hour or so). A cup of tomato sauce would make sense here--it would provide the moisture to finish cooking the rice. A cup of tomato paste doesn't look at all right to me.

-Paul W.

Unless you're cooking for a really large number of people, I can't imagine a cup of tomato paste going into much of anything. A cup of sauce sounds reasonable, given that you need some moisture to finish the rice.

Now that y'all mention it, a cup of sauce is closer to what you'd use for arroz mexicana, so yes, even less than that.

Two cups of onion also sounds like a lot, to me anyway.

Here is what AI says:
You are likely correct to be skeptical—1 cup of tomato paste is an extremely large amount of tomato paste for a standard biryani recipe. It would likely make the dish overpoweringly tangy and acidic, turning the biryani more into a tomato-heavy stew.
Standard Proportions: Most authentic biryani recipes call for 1–2 tablespoons of tomato paste (if used at all) or 2–3 fresh, chopped tomatoes to provide a balanced tang.

[Jenise]

Unless you're cooking for a really large number of people, I can't imagine a cup of tomato paste going into much of anything. A cup of sauce sounds reasonable, given that you need some moisture to finish the rice.

But thick liquids don't cook rice well. The cabbage and onions would have to give off a huge amount of liquid to balance it, and I just don't think that's possible.

Unless you're cooking for a really large number of people, I can't imagine a cup of tomato paste going into much of anything. A cup of sauce sounds reasonable, given that you need some moisture to finish the rice.

But thick liquids don't cook rice well. The cabbage and onions would have to give off a huge amount of liquid to balance it, and I just don't think that's possible.

Where's the test kitchen when we need it?!

[Jenise]

I'm still guessing that a tablespoon of tom paste plus a cup of water or broth would get you in the zone.

This recipe also says to allow the assembled biryani to "steam at low temperature" for about an hour. As I said that sort of thing is standard procedure for both biryani and for jambalaya, but--an hour??? Given that the basmati rice is already parboiled to the al dente stage, finishing it off shouldn't take anywhere near an hour. That's about four times as long as it takes to fully cook basmati rice from the initial raw state.

This recipe seems to have more than its share of typos.

-Paul W.