Sambar Rice

Any dish cooked on a slow flame for a long time is bound to taste divine. I have read somewhere that chefs of Bukhara Restaurant of Maurya Sheraton in Delhi cook their Dal Makhani for over six hours! That is really something.. and it leads me to wonder how creamy, wonderful and comforting that dal would be!


One of my dishes that fit into this category (not six hours of simmering!) is my mom’s Sambar rice. I choose to make this on those days when I am in no mood for active cooking, but have a lot of time on hand – perfect for lazy Sunday lunches and an amazing crowd pleaser. A bowl of steaming sambar rice and potato chips for that added crunch would make any tummy truly happy. This recipe serves two growlingly hungry stomachs.

Ingredients:

Rice: 2/3 cup
Toor dal: 1/3 cup
Tamarind: (soaked for a couple of hours): medium sized lemon
Vegetables (potatoes, drumsticks, green peas, carrots, tomatoes, beans, cauliflower, onions): 3 cups
Sambar powder (homemade or store bought): 2 tbsp
Salt: to taste
Curry leaves: Few sprigs
Corriander: to garnish
Gingelly oil: 5 tbsp
Ghee(to drizzle on the rice while serving): few tsps


For grinding:
Grated fresh coconut: 4 tbsp
Dhaniya seeds: 2 tbsp
Red chillies: 2 Nos
Chana dal: 1 tbsp
Corriander leaves (optional): 1 tbsp

For the tempering:
Red chillies (halved): 2 Nos
Mustard seeds: 1 tsp
Chana dal: 1 tsp
Urad dal: 1 tsp
Jeera: ½ tsp
Cashews (optional):1 tbsp
Hing: One big pinch


Method:

Cook the rice and the dal separately in a pressure cooker. Keep aside.
Wash and chop all the vegetables into slightly larger pieces. Keep aside.
Roast all the needed ingredients and grind to a fine powder and keep aside.
Heat the tamarind water in a fairly large vessel. Add the sambar powder and the vegetables and curry leaves and boil for about 10- 15 minutes till the vegetables are cooked and all the raw smell disappears.
Add the toor dal and let it cook for a while. (Usually at this stage, I transfer all my contents to my pressure cooker because it is heavy bottomed. Also, I find it easy to cover and cook the dish slow flame for a long time over a slow flame)
Add the ground masala and let it boil for some more time.
Now add the cooked rice and add the needed salt.
Now add about a cup of water and lower the flame. Let it cook covered on the slowest possible flame for about a minimum of 25 minutes.
Give it a good mix once in a while so that nothing sticks to the bottom. Ensure that the whole thing has come together well. The end product should be in a pouring consistency. The sambar rice will thicken as it cools down.
Switch off the flame and garnish with coriander leaves.
Now, in a separate pan or skillet, finish off the tempering and pour it over the sambar rice.
Mix well.
Serve this sambar rice with loads of ghee and potato chips or papads.
Enjoy!

This Sambar Rice is my contribution to 'Festive Rice Event' by Torview

Eggless vanilla custard with chopped fruits

If each one of us were faced with this question ‘Pick your favourite course of a meal?’, I am sure each one of us would come up with a different thing. My answer would definitely be ‘desserts’. The degree of sweet-madness is so high that sometimes when no dessert is available, I satisfy my incurable sweet tooth with one spoon of sugar or honey or in many cases even Bournvita! I am sure there are a few good-hearted souls out there who do relate to this.

Unsurprisingly, some 70% of my bookmarked recipes also comprise sweet dishes. I have vowed to try out as many of them as possible at my own comfortable pace. Here is a recipe of one of those easy-to-make hearty desserts from my interminable list of bookmarks. This basic recipe of eggless vanilla custard goes very well with any kind of chopped fruits when served chilled and is great with cake when served warm. I prepared this custard, chilled it for about two hours, added it to a bowl of chopped fruits, drizzled some honey over it and added some chopped nuts for a healthy yet wholesome dessert. You could also experiment with various colours and flavours.

Ingredients (serves four)

Milk: 2 cups
Corn starch / Corn flour: 2 tbsp
Sugar: 5 tbsp or more or less to taste
Fruits of choice: chopped
Honey: few tbsp to drizzle on top
Nuts (chopped): according to taste
Vanilla essence: ¾ tsp

Method:

Heat about one and a half cups of milk in a vessel and bring it to a boil.
To the remaining half a cup of milk, add cornstarch and mix well to avoid lumps.
Now add this cornstarch-milk mixture to the milk vessel.
Keep the flame on simmer and keep stirring constantly so that no lumps are formed and there is no sticking and scraping business.
When the mixture comes to a boil, add the sugar and let it boil again.
Let it thicken a bit more.
Take the vessel off the flame and add the vanilla essence and stir well.
Cool this mixture. It will thicken further on cooling. (If you dont want it too thick, you need to reduce the quantity of cornstarch.)

Once it reaches room temperature, chill in the fridge for 2 – 3 hours.
Chop the fruits and assemble them in serving cups.
Pour the custard mixture over it.

Drizzle some honey over it.
Garnish with nuts and serve chilled.
Enjoy!

Since this recipe is from a bookmark, this eggless vanilla custard with chopped fruits goes to ‘Bookmarked Recipes – Every Tuesday’ event by Priya Mitharwal.

Oatmeal Date Raisin Peda

I see a little irony here. This is my first participation in this marathon food blogging event ‘Sugar High Fridays’ and my entry for this event has no sugar or its sweet cousins in any direct form. Nevertheless, it is sweet because of all the dates and raisins it is loaded with. Hence, this oatmeal-date-raisin peda rightfully qualifies to be a part of this great event ‘Sugar High Fridays – Bite Size Desserts’ hosted by Aparna, one of my favourite bloggers.

This peda is adapted from Sharmi’s Fudge. Truly it is a cinch – right from start to finish. I felt these pedas are nothing but a fudgy younger brother of oatmeal breakfast bars, probably with a smaller shelf life. It takes no more than 20 minutes to put together. If you are looking for a dessert that would leave your mouth sweet, though not cloyingly so, and that is not loaded with too many calories, this is the thing for you.

Ingredients (Yields 14 medium size pedas)

Instant Oats (Quaker): ¾ cup
Peanuts (roasted and skin removed): ½ cup
Almonds (raw, chopped into tiny pieces): ¼ cup
Dates (chopped fine): 15 Nos
Raisins: ¼ cup
Cardamom: ¼ tsp
Ghee (to grease hands while making the pedas): 2 – 3 tsp
Water: About ¼ cup

Method:

Dry roast the oatmeal for about 3 – 5 minutes. Let it cool for a while.
Make a fine oatmeal powder out of it and keep aside.
Grind the almonds and peanuts coarsely with the cardamom. Keep aside.
Grind the dates and the raisins along with ¼ cup water to obtain a tight paste. (You could also use milk to make the paste, but, would reduce the shelf life of the sweet greatly. So, I used water.)
Mix the oatmeal powder and nut powder together.
Add the date-raisin paste to little by little and make small lemon sized balls using greased palms.
Now flatten the balls slightly and add a chopped almond in the middle for decoration.
A very healthy dessert is ready to be relished.