A very quick and very delicious rice

On weekdays I eat my lunch alone. Hubby and son both having carried their packed lunches along with them are never at home for lunch on a weekday. Now I am a person who loves one dish non-fussy meals. Hubby being a bit of a traditionalist where eating is concerned likes elaborate meals and so when I cook a Maharashtrian meal for the three of us (which is every evening ) I cook Bhaji, Amti, Chapatis some form of Koshimbir or salad and sometimes rice. It takes about an hour and a half to cook all this from scratch. Gets a bit monotonous when you have to do it almost everyday, though I admit I do prepare pasta and garlic bread and stuff like that and all three of us are very happy eating that too. Why wouldn't we be?

But then when I eat alone I try to make food that requires minimum amount of time cooking but is at the same time filling, nutritious and full on flavour. No compromise there. Some days back I made this rice with whatever was available in my fridge. I was surprised at how good it tasted. It was hot, spicy, sweet and sour all at the same time. And although I couldn't wait to dig in I had the good sense to take a picture of the dish. And am I glad I did. I can share it with all of you today.

Ingredients:

3 cups leftover cooked rice,

1 onion sliced,

1 tblspn readymade garlic paste from a bottle

1 cup cooked and shredded chicken,

1 cup assorted diced vegetables (capsicum, carrots,peas corn, sugar snap peas)

2 spring onions finely chopped,

2 tblspns tomato ketchup,

2 tblspns soya sauce,

1 stock cube of OXO veg,

salt to taste

Oil to cook

Method:

1. Heat the oil in a wok, and stir fry the sliced onion ,garlic and all the veggies until cooked but still with a bite to them

2. Next add and stir in the shredded chicken and crush and sprinkle the OXO stock cube over it. As the chicken is already cooked it does not require any further cooking.

3. Now add the rice, both the sauces and salt. Toss it all well but with a light hand. As a final touch add the chopped spring onions . These come at the end as a garnish.

Your rice is ready to eat. You can replace the chicken with scrambled eggs or skip both and make it completely vegetarian. The star ingredient here is the tomato ketchup. That is what lends the rice that awesome flavour. It is bit of cheating but who is complaining.

Pressure Cooker Masoor Rice

Masoor Rice or Masoor Biryani ? I am not sure what to call it. Ideally I would love to call it Masoor Biryani because it sounds so exotic ,but then a Biryani is no ordinary dish. It requires a good amount of organised preparation with multiple ingredients and the cooking also is a specialised. Contrary to that my rice is a very humble dish prepared with absolutely no particular recipe in mind. It took birth on a Sunday evening when the hubby wanted to have a spicy one dish meal, but definitely not moong dal khichadi (I do tend to make that quite often). So I came up with this . When I told him what I was making he was not convinced that it was what he wanted, but when he saw the finished product he just had to change his mind.

I used:

1 cup basmati rice,
3/4 cup whole masoor (red lentils) soaked in hot water for 1/2 an hour
1 onion thinly sliced,
5 cloves of garlic crushed
1 inch ginger pureed,
2 tomatoes coarsely pureed,
1 cup of chopped mixed vegetables of your choice (I used frozen peas, sweet corn and carrots)
1 heaped tblspn store bought biryani masala,
1 tblspn lemon juice,
1 heaped tspn chilly powder,
1/2 tspn turmeric powder,
salt to taste,
3 tbslpns oil or ghee
fresh chopped coriander , thinly sliced cucumber and hard boiled eggs for garnishing

The Method: (Couldn't be easier)

1. Heat the ghee/oil directly in the pressure cooker pan and start by frying the onions ,garlic and ginger until lightly browned,

2.Next add the tomatoes and continue frying on medium heat until they lose all the moisture,

3. Add the Biryani masala, chilly powder, turmeric powder , salt , vegetables and the whole masoor and give it a good stir. Keep the heat moderate.

4. At this stage add the rice and 2 cups and a little more water. Close the pressure cooker and cook as you would for any rice. I cooked it for 3 to 4 whistles and turned down the heat for one minute before switching off the gas.

Serve with quartered hard boiled eggs to make it a very filling meal.