Mushroom Rice (Mushroom Pulao) and some fun riddles :)

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It's been a while since I have posed any riddles for my readers. Here are a couple of them that I came across recently that made me go hmmm...., I wanted to share it with you all and see if you are able to figure these ones out. Here is the first one....

What gets wetter and wetter, the more it dries ?

and the second one....

What goes around the world but stays in a corner.

Looking forward to hearing all your responses to the riddles. Will post the correct answers in my next post:)

In the meanwhile, I have used mushrooms in myriad versions of curries, sometimes alone and sometimes in combination with other vegetables and have always enjoyed it. For some reason though I have rarely used mushrooms in a rice dish. Recently when I was browsing one of my cookbooks by Nita Mehta I came across an idea of  kind of pulao that used onions seeds and mushrooms in it. Now this recipe really piqued my interest and I decided to give the combination a try.

My adaptation of this recipe uses brown rice and I have tweaked the proportions slightly to our taste. The onions seeds are definitely the star ingredient in this simple rice dish, and even though this rice dish uses very minimal ingredients, it is very flavorful. Combine this with a curry and you have a delicious meal. If you have any plans to make something with mushrooms this week, give this rice a try and tell me what you think :)


 

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Ingredients and Method to make Mushroom Rice
1 1/2 cups brown basmati rice washed, drained and soaked in 2 and 1/4 cup of water for 30 mins
(can be substituted with white basmati rice too, see notes)
1 large onion cut fine
12 medium mushrooms cubed
2 tbsp oil/clarified butter (ghee/nei) / butter (use oil for a vegan version)
1/2 tsp onion seeds (kalonji)
1 thin sliver of ginger grated fine or minced
1/2 tsp minced garlic
salt to taste

Place the basmati rice in the rice cooker along with the water it has been soaked in and set the rice setting to the kind of rice you are using, white for white rice and brown for brown rice. Or cook the rice in the pressure cooker and keep aside.

In a large heavy bottomed pan, heat oil/ butter/ clarified butter on medium heat and add onion seeds. Stir the onion seeds for 20 to 30 secs.

Then add onions and saute until onions are transparent. Add garlic and ginger and stir a few times. Add mushrooms and stir for a few minutes until it is cooked. Add salt to taste and mix well.
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Either add the mushroom mixture to the cooked rice in the rice cooker, mix gently and allow it to stay on warm setting for a little while before serving, or add the cooked rice to the pan, mix gently and allow to heat through on low heat for a couple of mins. That's it, the rice is done, really fast and easy peasy isn't it ?
Serve this hot with any curry of choice  or some raita for a quick and satisfying meal :)

Notes:
If you want to sub white basmati rice instead of brown basmati rice, wash, drain and soak in water  in the ratio recommended on the packet. Usually the ratio for rice to water is 1 : 1.5 cups and proceed with the rest of the recipe as above.  

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Carrot Coconut Rice ~ Gajarwale chawal

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First the question, are you a morning person or an evening person ? I ask because it seems to me that everyone seems to have one preference, either they find it easy to get up early in the morning or find it easy to stay up until late at night but find it difficult to get up early. I come in the latter category, staying up at night is always easier for me than getting up early in the morning. But since getting up early is the only option nowadays, I have learned to deal with it. Read that as, I now know how loud the alarm needs to ring to wake me right up :)

But there is one thing that always makes me glad that I got up before daybreak.... the sunrise. Every day the sunrise is so beautiful that it fills me with a sense of awe just to look at it. The different colors streaking across the sky just before the sun makes an appearance looks fantastic. The sky never looks the same on any two days,each day brings a different color palette and something beautiful to look at and admire. The only thing that remains the same is the sense of serenity and the awe I feel every time I see the sunrise :) Here are a few pictures that I managed to capture of the sunrise a few days this last week.....

 

And this one was just the day before yesterday......

 

Beautiful isn't it ?

Moving on here is a carrot coconut rice that I just came up with last week. I wanted something light, yet something simple which did not take too long to make. This rice is what I ended up making that evening.

 

I have never used this kind of combination of ingredients to flavor rice and was a little worried that  it might not work out. But I was pleasantly surprised by how flavorful this rice turned out. It turned out to be exactly what I was looking for, light and flavorful and with a bowl of vegetable raita, it was a perfect dinner :)

 

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Ingredients and Method to make Carrot coconut rice
1 1/2 cup brown basmati rice + 2 1/4 cup water (see notes)
2 to 3 small bay leaves
3 cups shredded carrots (gajar)
salt to taste
2 to 3 tsp clarified butter (ghee/ nei) (can be substituted with oil for a vegan version, I would suggest coconut oil)
1/4 cup fresh grated coconut (can be substituted with frozen coconut thawed to room temperature)
handful cilantro (coriander leaves/ hara dhania) cut fine

Grind together
1/2 tsp fennel seeds (saunf/ sombu)
1/2 tsp whole black pepper (miri/ milagu)
4 whole dry red chilies ( or according to taste)
1 inch piece of cinnamon (dalchini)

Wash and rinse rice and let soak in 2 1/4 cup of water for about 30 minutes.

Place in rice cooker, add bay leaves to it and set to brown rice settings.

Powder fennel seeds, whole black pepper, dry red chilies and cinnamon to a fine powder in a blender/mixer/spice grinder and keep aside.

In a medium sized pan, heat clarified butter and add shredded carrots to it and stir a few times.  Add the spice powder and stir a few more times, then add salt to taste mix well. Remove from heat and pour entire mixture on the semi cooked brown rice. Mix well and allow the rice to cook completely.
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When done, adjust salt to taste if required and garnish with grated coconut and cilantro and mix well.

Serve hot with curry of choice, raita (vegetable salad with yogurt)/ chips or papad.

Notes:
You can easily make this with white rice too, just rinse and drain white basmati rice, add water as required for it and place in rice cooker with white rice setting and proceed with the rest of the recipe ( usually the proportion of water to rice for white long grain basmati is 1 1/2 cups of water for 1 cup of rice)

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Spinach Corn Rice and an amazing art clip

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Recently my  cousin B shared this video clip of sand art with me. I was totally blown away when I saw it and could not resist sharing it with my readers. What an amazing and creative artist and how incredible that she can create such wonderful art with light, a glass table and some sand.Who would have thought sand could be  used in such an artistic and creative manner. Here is another clip from the same artist.....

Moving on, inspired by the tawa pulao I made this spinach corn rice as a quick dish for dinner last week. Tawa pulao is a famous street food from Bombay and the special thing about it is that pav bhaji masala is used to flavor this rice giving it a very distinctive and unique flavor.Unlike the usual tawa pulao I gave this dish a slight twist and a different feel by seasoning it with some cumin seeds and chilies. This simple and quick rice turned out to be very flavorful and all it needed was a little raita to make it a complete meal.




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Ingredients and Method to make Spinach Corn Rice
1 1/2 cups of brown basmati soaked in 2 1/2 cups of water for at least 30 minutes (see notes)
1 1/2 cup corn kernels
9 oz spinach chopped  (approximately 5 cups of packed spinach leaves)
1 onion cut fine
2 Thai or Indian green chilies cut lengthwise
1 tbsp oil
1 tsp cumin seeds
2 tsp pav bhaji masala (or to taste)(available in most Indian groceries)  (can be substituted with any other curry powder)
salt to taste

Soak brown basmati in the container from the rice cooker for at least 30 minutes.
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In a small pan, heat oil add cumin seeds, when seeds sizzle add green chilies. Stir for a few seconds. When the chilies begin to change color, add onions and saute until onions turn transparent. Add corn, spinach, salt to taste, pav bhaji masala and stir for a minute or so. Remove and pour this entire mixture on the soaked brown rice.

Set the rice cooker to the brown rice setting. When done, mix the rice with the vegetables gently taking care not to break it, adjust salt if required and serve hot with raita or curry of choice and papad or chips

Notes:
You can substitute white basmati in place of brown basmati in this recipe.

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Chawli/ Black Eyed Peas Pulao

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 Most of you might have heard about CSN stores by now, for those of you who haven't, CSN stores is made up of more than 200 online niche shops offering a wide range of products. Whether you want a bathroom sink or some cookware, CSN stores seem to have just about everything. This time around I have been contacted by CSN stores to do a product review. So watch this space for the review in the near future!

Moving on to the other reason for this post. This pulao with black eyed peas was something I put together for a sunday lunch to go with methiwale gajar matar curry.The idea was to make something simple and flavorful  yet unique. I also wanted to try using some type of beans in the pulao. The reason I used black eyed peas was only because I conveniently had some on hand and wanted to use it up soon. Any type of beans like chickpeas or red kidney beans would have worked in this recipe.  With some raita this pulao could easily double as a one dish meal too :-)



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Ingredients and Method to make Pulao with black eyed peas
1 1 /2 cups of brown basmati soaked in 2 1/2 cups of water for 30 minutes
2 cups frozen black eyed peas (Chawli/karamani)  (thawed to room temperature)
1 large onion cut fine
2 1/2 cups of mixed vegetables (any combination of cauliflower, peas, beans, carrots, corn )
2 tbsp oil
salt to taste
3 bay leaves

 Masala
1 inch piece of cinnamon
2 whole green cardamom
1 tsp coriander seeds
1 tsp cumin seeds
4 dry red chilies (or to taste)

Grind together the ingredients mentioned under masala, to a fine powder and keep aside.

Cook the black eyed peas on the stove top or microwave until it is half cooked, just a little soft but not very soft. Keep this aside
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In a small pan, heat oil, add onions to it and saute until onions are transparent.Add the vegetables and stir them for a few minutes. Add the ground masala powder and stir a few times.

Place this sauteed vegetables, bay leaves, salt to taste and the soaked rice along with the rice soak water in the rice cooker container, place in rice cooker and set to brown rice setting.

When done, gently mix everything lightly and serve hot with curry of choice/ dhal / raita

Notes:
If you want to use dry black eyed peas , soak them in sufficient water for 6 to 8 hours. Drain water and semi cook them until almost done and proceed with the recipe as above.

You can make this with white basmati as well, just substitute with the same quantity of white basmati with water in the proportion of 1 : 1.5 or according to your manufacturers directions and set your rice cooker to the white rice setting.

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Miloni Tahari (Mixed Vegetable with Rice) in a rice cooker

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Have you met some one who plans their lunch/ dinner menu, days or sometimes even weeks in advance. I really admire such people, it must make life easier in respect to shopping for groceries and such..... I, on the other hand, have never managed to plan my lunch/dinner menu even a few days in advance, let alone weeks. Sometimes I do plan my dinner menu a day or so in advance but that is it, I have never yet planned my menu a week or weeks in advance except if it was for a party or I was entertaining friends or something like that...

Most days this is not a problem, I manage to come up with something that works for us. Sometimes though, I find myself staring at the veggie tray looking for inspiration. As if just by looking at the vegetables, some new recipe is going to somehow telegraph itself from the vegetable to my brain :-) One such day when I was looking for ideas on what to make for Sunday lunch and my brain was refusing to come up with ideas on its own, I turned to a cook book. More precisely Nita Mehta's cookbook on Indian vegetarian cooking. I found two items there that sounded interesting and which I thought would work well together.

The first one was this Mushroom peas curry that I posted sometime back. The second was this rice dish with the name Miloni Tahari. I have never heard of this rice dish before and frankly I have no idea what the two words mean, if any of you know the meaning do share. Anyway the recipe itself sounded very interesting and I decided to try it.  I tweaked the recipe slightly, used brown basmati instead of white, changed the spices a little and made it in the rice cooker instead of the stove top. The result was a very flavorful and delicious rice dish that was a great fit with the curry I mentioned earlier.





Here is another closer view of the mixed vegetable rice.......



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Ingredients and Method to make Miloni tahari

2 cups brown basmati rinsed and soaked in 3 cups of water for 30 minutes (see notes)
1 large carrot cut into 1/2 inch pieces
1/4 head of cauliflower broken into florets
2 med to med large potatoes peeled and cut into 1/2 inch pieces
1 cup fresh or frozen peas (if frozen thaw to room temperature)

2 tbsp oil
3 cloves
1 inch cinnamon stick
3 small bay leaves
1 1/2 tsp garam masala
1 tsp lemon juice
salt to taste ( I used approximately 1 1/2 tsp for this quantity)

Grind together
1 large onion
3 medium tomatoes
1 tsp minced garlic
1 1/2 inch piece of ginger

Grind onion, tomatoes ginger and garlic in a blender or spice grinder to a smooth paste adding only as much water as is required to move the blades. Keep the paste aside.

Heat oil in a medium sized heavy bottomed pan, add the onion tomato paste and saute until it is dry and the onion loses its raw smell.

Add cloves and cinnamon stick and stir a few times.Add vegetables and saute for approximately five minutes or until all the vegetables are semi cooked.

Add garam masala,bay leaves, salt to taste and stir a couple of minutes.

Add these vegetables to the container that goes into the rice cooker. Add the soaked rice with water to the same container. Add lemon juice, mix everything well.
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Then set the rice cooker to either brown rice setting or white rice setting (depending on which rice you use to make this) and forget about it until done :-)

Just before serving, gently fluff up the rice and mix the vegetables if any that are settled at the bottom and serve hot with raita/ curry of choice.


Serves approximately 2 to3

I served this with raita and mushroom peas curry but this rice can be served like pulao with just some raita too.

Notes
You can substitute brown basmati with white basmati too, just follow the same steps as brown basmati. You may need to reduce the quantity of water by quarter to half cup when using white rice since it does not need as much water as brown rice.

Here is the latest bit of humor that had me in splits, check it out if you have a minute.........

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Rice cooker Peas Pulao and some humor :-)

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Here is a little bit of humor that I came across recently that I thought my readers would enjoy....

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Scared Sleeping

Shakey went to a psychiatrist. "Doc," he said, "I've got trouble. Every time I get into bed, I think there's somebody under it. I get under the bed, I think there's somebody on top of it. Top, under, top, under. "you gotta help me, I'm going crazy!"

"Just put yourself in my hands for two years," said the shrink. "Come to me three times a week, and I'll cure your fears."

"How much do you charge?"

"A hundred dollars per visit."

"I'll sleep on it," said Shakey.

Six months later the doctor met Shakey on the street. "Why didn't you ever

come to see me again?" asked the psychiatrist.

"For a hundred buck's a visit? A bartender cured me for ten dollars."

"Is that so! How?"

"He told me to cut the legs off the bed!"

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Funny huh ? I sure enjoyed it.....

Moving on, I am sure there are literally hundreds of variation of peas pulao, since each person has their own way of making this dish. This is my take on peas pulao. I used white basmati rice, a rare indulgence for us since I cook with brown basmati all the time. I find my rice cooker inordinately useful when making any type of pulao because it keeps each grain of cooked rice whole and separate and has the additional benefit of being able to keep the pulao hot/ warm until we are ready to have it. The icing on the cake, figuratively speaking, is that it requires very little attention, just mix in the ingredients, press the start button and you are good to go....

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Ingredients and method to make peas puloa in the rice cooker

1 medium sized onion cut fine
3 cups basmati white rice
3 1/2 cups water (soak basmati rice in water for 30 minutes prior to proceeding with the recipe)
3 cups green peas fresh or frozen

3 tbsp oil (or more if you like more)
1 tsp cumin seeds (jeera)
3 Thai or Indian green chilies slit lengthwise (or to taste)

4 small bay leaves
2 whole green cardamoms
2 tsp Kitchen king masala (or any other curry powder) (see notes)
salt to taste

Place basmati rice is a bowl, fill with water, swirl with hand a couple of times and then drain water. Add 3 1/2 cups of water and allow basmati rice to soak for about 30 minutes or so

In a small pan, heat oil, add cumin seeds to it, when cumin seeds begin to splutter add green chilies. Stir a couple of times.

Then add onions and saute until onions are transparent. Add green peas and stir a few times

Quickly add whole green cardamoms, kitchen king masala, bay leaves and stir a few times.Remove from heat and keep aside.

In the rice cooker container, add the soaked basmati rice along with the water it was soaked in, then add the onions+ peas+ spices to it and mix well.

Add salt to taste, mix well and then close the container and set the rice cooker to the white rice setting, if you have that or just push the button to start cooking.

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When it is ready, mix well and keep warm until ready to be served.

Serve hot with curry of choice or dhal of choice along with some raita and papad/ chips

Serves approximately 6.

Notes
You can use garam masala instead of Kitchen king masala, If you plan to substitute with garam masala use half the quantity of kitchen king masala suggested since garam masala tends to be a bit more spicier.

You can even use curry powder in place of Kitchen king masala if you so choose...

This recipe can be easily halved if you want to make less.

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Cumin Rice ( Jeera Rice )

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Jeera rice (Cumin rice) is a simple and delicious rice variety that made its way into my kitchen courtesy of my father in law.He tasted this rice at a restaurant and wanted to replicate it at home,as a result, on one of those occasions when the entire family seemed to be tinkering in the kitchen we landed up making this rice for the first time.

Since then this has been a regular feature in my kitchen. Combine this with any curry and you have a flavorful, delicious meal. Try this when you have some side dishes that tend to be heavier and you want something more flavorful than just plain rice and an alternative to the usual pulao or biryani.



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Ingredients and method to make the Cumin Rice (Jeera Rice )
1 1/2 cup long grain basmati white rice
2 Thai or Indian variety green chillies (cut lengthwise)(optional or according to taste)
1 and 1/2 tsp cumin seeds
3 tsp clarified butter (ghee/nei)
salt to taste

Place the rice in a large bowl, fill with water and swirl with hand and drain water. Do this a couple of times. Fill the bowl with 1 and 3/4 cup of water and allow to soak for 15 to 20 mins. Proportion of water to rice is 1 and 1/4 cup of water for 1 cup of rice.  Pressure cook the long grain basmati rice with soaked water until cooked but with each grain separate. When the pressure subsides, open pressure cooker, remove rice and allow it to cool a little.

For rice cooker instructions scroll to the end of the recipe

In a large heavy bottomed pan heat the clarified butter and add the cumin seeds to it.
When the cumin seeds sizzle, add green chillies and stir a few times
Add the cooked rice and salt and mix well.

Serve with curry of choice.
Serves about 3 to 4.

Notes:
Oil can be used instead of clarified butter but this rice tastes best when made with clarified butter.

Variations:
Chopped red onion (about 1 small one for this quantity of rice) can be sauteed along with the green chillies for a slightly different flavor.

Rice Cooker Directions:
If using the rice cooker, wash and drain rice as mentioned above and place the rice in the rice cooker along with water in the ratio of 1 : 1.5 cups. That is for 1 cup of white rice, use about 1 and 1/2 cups of water. Allow the rice to soak for 15 to 20 mins, then set the cooker to white rice settings. When the rice is ready,allow to cool slightly. Place a small pan on medium heat and heat clarified butter/ oil, add cumin seeds, then green chilies as mentioned above, then pour the entire clarified butter + cumin seeds on the cooked rice. Add salt to taste, mix gently and serve. 

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