Brown Lentil Rice

My dear readers, Thank you for all the emails and inquiries as to why I was missing from action. I just needed sometime for myself to rejuvenate and start with the cooking experiments again. The good news is that I have been cooking more health recipes with a Konkani twist. You will see much more whole grain recipes in the future.



Here is a recipe that my family loved the most - Brown Lentil Rice.

Brown Rice & Barley Dosa

Brown Rice & Barley Dosa served with Sambar
I always try to alter my recipes to make them more healthy. I do strongly believe that white rice, all purpose flour or maida and other refined products do have very few or no nutritional benefits. Hence I often try to modify my recipes to use whole wheat flour in place of all purpose flour/maida and brown rice and rosematta rice instead of white rice. I have also started experimenting with barley since I found out that barley has more fiber than brown rice.

Ever since I made Brown Rice and Barley Dosa, the definition of dosa has changed forever for me. The dosa looks a little brownish unlike the pretty well known snow white dosas.

Homemade Pasta Sauce with Sun dried Tomatoes

I have a great temptation to try a variety of cuisines. But I hardly like any of them. My hubby always jokes around saying I try to Indianize any food served to me. In fact I do that a lot. Even when I try to cook those at home, I try to put some extra chillies or garam masala in everything making it palatable for my taste buds. I tried quite a few times making pasta at home, but never liked those, until this one.

Homemade Pasta Sauce with Sun dried Tomatoes  
Over my weekend shopping, I saw Sun dried tomatoes in a jar for a good price at a warehouse store and was tempted to buy those, reason, I wanted to make something with tomatoes for JFI:Tomatoes, a blog event hosted by RP of My Workshop for the Month of March.

Veggie Patty with Brown rice & Barley

I just love the veggie patty in the Subway Sandwiches. Last week, I was reading the recipe for Aloo tikki on Homespices and an idea just flashed me to make the veggie patties at home. Aloo tikki is an great alternative for the veggie patties, but I wanted it be filled with veggies and high fiber. I peeked in my pantry and found some brown rice, barley and bits and pieces of leftover veggies. I managed to come up with a my own recipe for veggie patty. It was just delicious, I gobbled up a few for evening snack, they were like cutlets.

Fried Rice with Brown Rice

Vegetable Brown Rice with Chilli-garlic sauce
Brown Rice is the Kernel of rice from which only the hull has been removed. In White rice all the high fiber & nutrient rice outer bran is milled and thrown away, while the brown rice retains all the good stuff that the rice has. But eating brown rice is not as fun as white rice. This has a chewy texture like whole wheat grain and barley.

Vegetable Noodles for the Indian Republic Day

Jan 26, 1950 is a great day for Indian History. Its the day India went Republic and the constitution of India came into effect. My fellow blogger, Pooja with Creative Ideas has announced a Orange ,White & Green Theme of the week to commemorate the occasion. This is my contribution to the event.


Vegetable Noodles

When I read about the event, I was very enthusiastic and started searching all archives for photos with the Tiranga Theme. I found a couple of Interesting ones.

Shevei (Fresh Rice Noodles)

Konkani Style homemade rice noodles
Shevei is rice noodles made from the scratch at home. Authentic konkani way of making sevei is a time taking task. But once you have tasted the shevei you will know its worth all the efforts.

To make shevei or fresh rice noodles you will need the following equipments
A grinder or mixer grinder or a heavy duty blender to grind the batter
shevei dante or A shevei maker- This is a special equipment designed to press noodles, available in the Mangalore area. The main part is the ricer to press the rice balls into noodles, that looks almost like the chakkuli/chakli maker. The shevei maker has a sturdy stand with 3 legs that keeps the ricer elevated at a height to ease the process of collecting the noodles. It also has handle sturdy handle on the top that helps in the uniformly squeeze action.
Traditional Shevei maker
Do not worry if you do not have a shevei maker. Use you chakkuli/ricer maker to press the noodles.

Shevei can be made of white rice or the parboiled rice, i.e. the kerala rosematta rice.
2 cups white rice and 1 cup shredded coconut or
2 cups parboiled/rosematta rice only

Soak rice in plenty of water for 9 hrs. Grind the rice and coconut into a paste. The rice should be of the consistency of the rava. Add salt.
Heat a kadai, pour 1/2 tsp oil in it and rub the whole surface of the kadai with oil. Pour the rice paste and cook on a medium flame. Keep mixing the paste till it turns in to a thick lump. see the picture. This process is called aLache in Konkani.
Rice paste made into a lump
Let it cool for 5 minutes. While the paste is still hot, take a tablespoon of the batter and make small balls. Steam the balls for about 10 mins.
Steamed rice balls before pressing into noodles
Put 2 rice balls at a time in the shevei maker and press the noodles. The noodles needs to be completely cool down before they hold their shape. Spread the noodles on a damp clean cloth. You can cover the noodles with a damp cloth and spread another layer about it.
Shevei piled between layers of damp cloth

There are 3 well known ways to eat Shevei and I love all the 3 ways. I usually eat it in 3 courses, once with each of the following methods

Serve with Sambar.

Sweet Coconut milk often is paired up with Shevei for sweet tooth. Make a thick coconut milk from a fresh coconut. Add jaggery to it. You may also add some cardamom powder. If you are planning to use canned coconut milk, do not bother. Canned coconut milk has a coconut oil taste to it, which is nowhere close to the fresh coconut milk.

I also like to drizzle a spoonful of fresh coconut oil and mango pickle on the shevei.

Vegetable Pulao

Ingredients

1 cup basmati rice
2 cup mixed vegetables , (carrots, beans)chopped
1 tsp garam masala
¼ tsp turmeric powder
oil or ghee
1” cinnamon stick, 2 cloves, 2 cardamom

grind to paste
2 medium onions
4 cloves garlic
1” ginger
4 green chillies
Method

Soak rice for 30minutes, drain and set aside to dry.
Prepare the paste grinding the ingredients listed above.
Heat oil/ghee in a pan or wok, called kadai in Hindi. Add cinnamon, cloves and cardamom and fry for a minute
Add the paste and fry under low flame. Add just enough oil so that the paste does not stick to the kadai. Fry until the oil comes out on the sides of the pan. i.e the raw smell goes off approx 20minutes
Add turmeric powder and garam masala and stir for 2 more minutes. Add rice and fry for 2 minutes. Now add the vegetables and fry for another 2 minutes.
Transfer the contents to the pressure cooker. Add 2 cups of water to the empty kadai and bring it to a boil. This helps you to get all the stuff from the kadai and also cleans the kadai. Add boiling water to the pressure cooker. Add salt and stir. I add water double the quantity of your rice, adjust water quantity according to your rice. Use the same proportion of water that you would use to make your rice otherwise.
Close the lid of the pressure cooker lid and cook to your desired level. I cook for 3 whistles

Tips : Let the cooker cool down on its own. Do not hurry to open the lid. After the pressure comes down, open the lid and let the rice cool down for another 30mins before you insert the spoon. Hot rice will get smashed down easily and the pulao may get mushy.

This is just a variation in the making with same ingredients. Instead of grinding the onions, green chillies, garlic and ginger into paste and frying, you can just reverse the process. First fry these ingredients and grind into paste. This just helps you to judge better when to stop frying.

For a quick pulao, do not grind onions and green chillies to paste. Use red chili powder instead of green chillies. Use ginger garlic paste if you have it ready. Finely chop onions. Fry onions and ginger garlic paste.

This recipe serves 2 people

Spinach Rice

Ingredients
1 cup Rice
2 tsp Butter
5 cloves
4 cardmom
1" cinnamon
1 medium onion,chopped
4 green chilli, finely chopped
1 tsp ginger garlic paste
2 tomatoes, chopped.
1 tsp cumin powder
1 tsp coriander powder
100 gms frozen spinach or fresh spinach
15 cashew, optional
1 small carrot, optional
½ cup peas, optional
2 cups water
salt to taste

Method
1.In a pressure cooker heat butter put in the cloves, cardmom, cinnamon, cashews.
2.Once they start spluttering add onions, chilli and ginger garlic paste.
3.Fry till onion is light brown.
4.Add tomatoes and cook for about 5 min.
5.Add cumin and coriander powder and cook for 2 min
6.Add rice to it and stir well to combine.
7.Then add carrot, peas, spinach, salt and water.
8.Take off the heat after 3 whistles.
Serve hot with Raita or any Gravy curry.

Methi Rice

Ingredients
1 tsp chilli powder (acc to your preferrence)
1/2 tsp turmeric powder
2 medium tomatoes, diced, optional
6-8 cloves garlic, crushed
1 bunch cilantro/coriander leaves, chopped
1 bunch methi leaves, chopped
1-2 cups cooked white rice
1/2 cup water
oil for seasoning

Method
Heat oil in kadai/pan and fry garlic in it.
Add the powders and fry of a minute, till the raw smell goes off. Add diced tomatoes, mix well. Cover and cook on low heat till the tomatoes are well cooked. Crush the tomatoes will the back of the spoon to puree it.

Add the water anf bring it to a boil. Add methi leaves, cover and cook.

When methi is almost done, add cilantro and salt. Bring it to boil. Add more water if its dry. Let there be some liquid so that there is room for rice to absorb the flavors as it cooks and blends in. Add rice and cook on low heat for sometime until all the water is absorbed. Adjust salt.


Let the rice be little hard to start with. You can cook it later with methi till done. Do not worry if it gets little mushy. Taste more good.
Good recipe for left over rice. Actually it gets better with well cooked left over rice, since the rice grains get separated next day.