If you think lamb biryani is easy to cook, think again. Food Critic Richard McComb watches a chef with the presidential touch.

Guneet Singh Bindra has done a good job describing how he makes his knock-out lamb saffron biryani, but he insists he is a visual person.

I need to see him in action. “It’s far easier showing you how I do it,” he says, leaving me for a lunch-time shift in the kitchen.

Later on, while I am finishing off a dish of the juicy meat and rice at Asha’s, I notice Guneet, head chef at the Birmingham restaurant, waving excitedly across the dining room. The moment of truth has arrived: another batch of biryani rice is being prepared and he has reserved me a ringside seat in the cauldron of heat that serves as his office.

The classic lamb curry is one of four delights Asha’s will be serving at the Taste of Birmingham food festival, which is staged at Cannon Hill Park from July 16-18. It is an eye-opening experience watching the biryani being prepared, seeing the love and care that is extended on a dish I ignorantly assumed was fairly easy to put together.

To a huge pot of steaming water, Guneet adds 10 kilograms of four-year-old rice. This strikes a novice like me as unusual. I thought the grains didn’t hang around for long.

Guneet, who is 33, explains that leaving the rice to mature ensures as much natural moisture as possible evaporates, making it less starchy and lighter to eat. He picks up a handful to show me. It is light brown in colour, not white like most of the stuff in supermarkets.

Rice, he says, can mature for up to eight years. The dryness and strength of the rice is essential for a top biryani, where the grains should remain long and unbroken during cooking.

The rice is cooked for eight minutes in the water, which contains a small swish of vegetable oil, to further eliminate starch. It it then removed and left to drain briefly while the water is replaced with a reddy/orange vegetable stock, or jhol.

The stock has been bubbling aware fiercely and also contains clarified butter, a little cream and Asha’s in-house garam masala. (The latter, says Guneet, has to be made in the restaurant as it lasts only a week before it turns bitter and has to be discarded. Commercial mixes are no good, he insists.)

The rice and stock is layered into the pot – first the rice, then a few ladles of liquid – the rice being squirted with diluted saffron. Timing is crucial and it is important not to hang about while the rice is layered or the bottom will dry out. How long did it take Guneet to get it right, I ask?

“Three years,” he says, matter-of-factly. “Every time I have a new chef on trial I get him to cook rice. If he can do that well, I know he will be fine.”

A damp cloth is placed over the top layer of rice to ensure the moisture is trapped. Then it is on with a big metal lid, which is weighed down to get as close a seal as possible. The rice is left to steam on a low flame for an hour.

When orders are called, chunks of tender, marinated leg of lamb are added to portions of the rice in individual copper pans and these are finished off on a gas flame for 15 minutes, topped with crispy onion, saffron and vetiver, a fragrant grass.

The finished dish is served with extra gravy and is extremely moist, not dry; and not a grain of rice is broken. At Taste of Birmingham, Asha’s biryani will be served with a spiced raita. Put it in your notebook of dishes to try.

Guneet and his team will also be serving dahi bhalla and papdi, a cold vegetarian summer starter comprising baby gram flour balls with crispy pastry, dunked in sweetened, spiced yoghurt. There will be jumbo chingli prawns, courtesy of a recipe from restaurant founder, the Indian singing legend Asha Bhosle. The dish features black tiger prawns marinated with stem ginger, coriander stalks and lemon juice paste before being crumbed and shallow fried.

Guneet confesses a soft spot for the Asha’s fourth dish for Taste – chicken malai kebabs. One of the Newhall Street restaurant’s customers pops in every week, just for the succulent chicken pieces. The unnamed gent clearly has presidential tastes because Guneet perfected the dish, that requires a marinade of soft cheese, yoghurt and cashew nut paste, while preparing dinner for Bill Clinton.

Guneet was working at Bukhara, one of India’s most famous restaurants, at the Sheraton Hotel, New Delhi. Clinton stayed for a week and Guneet was appointed official chef to the then US President. He treasures an official White House photograph showing Clinton smiling next to him.

“He was so fond of the food he used to skip lunch so he could have a good dinner,” recalls Guneet. “At the end of the visit, he said, ‘I could eat another naan – but make sure there is a stretcher for me.’”

Clinton is among a number of high-profile world figures Guneet has cooked for on his culinary travels through India, Dubai and the Pacific. He has rustled up Indian cuisine for Vladimir Putin and Bill Gates, actor Morgan Freeman and F1 driver Michael Schumacher.

He claims he has never been nervous, except when he finally got to meet Asha herself. When she first phoned him, to discuss future business opportunities, Guneet thought it was a prank: “I said, ‘Yes, fine. Send over the details.’ And then the travel tickets arrived to meet her in Bombay. I was so nervous because she is a very big star in India.”

Asha, he says, is a terrific cook – “She is not a person who uses her name just to open a restaurant” – and remains a down-to-earth character despite her fame.

Guneet recalls: “When I met her, she held my hand and said, ‘I am opening a restaurant in the UK. Would you take care of it for me?”

Asha’s opened in Birmingham in 2006 and Guneet’s development of the menu has turned Asha’s into one of the city’s modern Indian restaurant successes. Brummie diners, he has discovered, prefer more spice, chilli and garlic in their food than customers at Asha’s in Dubai so he has tweaked the dishes accordingly.

Guneet has always travelled, even when he was a child, going with his father, a banker, all over India. His nomadic background seems to chime with Birmingham’s multi-cultural life. Punjabi by birth, Guneet says he comes from all four corners of Indian. “I am an international person,” he adds.

* Taste of Birmingham is at Cannon Hill Park from July 16-18. For more details, go to: http://taste.visitbirmingham.com