Sometimes nothing is more comforting than a one-pot meal. Ask my friends and they'll tell you that all these rice varieties are my specialty. So I thought I'd share this fast fast meal with the sparing few who don't know how to go about it.Ingredients
1. Cooked rice - Basmati gives the whole dish a special texture and fantastic flavour. But if you don't have it or are not in the mood for it, just cook rice the way you'd normally do unless your 'normally' is soggy.
2. Veggies - use your imagination once more! Here I've used diced onions, brinjals, red capsicum, peas, beans and radish, yes, radish. It lends an unparalleled taste to the whole dish. Give it a try! Of course you could use just about anything else too - carrots, zuchini, asparagus and what not. That's the best part about this dish - the liberty of ingredients. And that's why this meal for me is almost always a last-minute choice.
3. Oil
4. Mustard seeds and jeera seeds, salt, red chilli powder for seasoning, and coriander leaves for the garnishing.
How?
1. As simple as can be! Heat a spoon of oil in a pan and allow crackling of mustard-jeera seeds. (If you want, you can add garlic, green chilli at this step. I wasn't in the garlicky mood today n hence skipped it).
2. Once the seeds sputter, add the veggies in this order - onions first, red capsicum and beans next, radish-brinjals and peas last. Add salt and simmer at medium-high with the lid closed for 5-7 minutes till the veggies become all lack-lustre indicating they've cooked.
3. Add the red chilli powder to taste. You can add turmeric if you want a yellowish hue to your rice.
4. Once the veggies are done, add the rice little by little while making sure to blend it in with the veggies as you go along. And this works best when the rice is separate-separate (udhiri udhiri). Garnish with washed, chopped coriander leaves.
And voilà! It's simple... easy to cook (less than 20 minutes overall once you have your veggies ready - shortcut method: break open a pack of frozen veggies) and absolutely delicious.
Serve with yogurt/potato chips or both. Bon appetit!
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