Tag Archives: rice

Pudina (Mint) Rice

When we were returning from a friend’s house at Koppal, his wife packed lunch for us as a surprise. When we had it on the way, I was blown off by its flavor and taste. On reaching home, I asked her for its recipe and she obliged.

Mint is one of the oldest and most popular herbs that is grown around the world. It can bring that extra zing and unique flavor to almost any thing you cook. Pudina is packed with antioxidants and phytonurients that can work wonders for your stomach. It relieves  acidity and flatulence. The strong antioxidants present in mint leaves leaves the skin with a natural glow and rehydrate dull and dry skin.

Ingredients:

1 cup Rice

Salt

2 ½ cups of water for sona masuri rice (1 cup water if you use Basmati rice)

To grind:

1 cup, lightly packed mint leaves

A small bunch of coriander leaves

½ inch piece of ginger

6,7 garlic flakes

1 green chilli

½ cup grated coconut

To season:

2 tbsps oil

½ tsp cumin seeds

1 bay leaf

3 cloves

1 mace

3 cardamoms

1 small piece cinnamon

To garnish:

1 tbsp cashew nuts roasted in 1 tsp ghee

Method:

  • Soak the rice for 15 minutes.
  • Heat oil in a pressure cooker; add cumin seeds, bay leaf, clove, mace, cardamom, cinnamon, saute for a while.
  • Add the ground masala and roast lightly.
  • Pour water, salt and bring to boil.
  • Add the soaked rice and cook on medium flame for two minutes.
  • Close the cooker and pressure cook for five minutes.
  • Serve hot with cucumber raita.

Pudina rice

Mavinakayi Chitranna (Mango Rice)

mango chitranna

I love Ugadi. We hang fresh mango leaves at the door to purify and disinfect incoming air. We start the day by eating neem (a very, very bitter tree) flowers mixed with jaggery, to signify that we will take the sweet and the bitter that life has to offer, in the same spirit. That, undoubtedly, is my favorite part of the day and I often sneak in and eat everything that is remaining.

The next thing I love most about the day, is the mango rice. Oh, how I look forward to lunch. Ugadi heralds the start of the new lunar year, and also of the summer. It is the perfect time to start eating raw mangoes, something that helps the body cool down and stay healthy.

Time taken: 20 min
Serves 4

Ingredients

2 small raw mangoes
2½ cups rice
2 tbsp freshly grated coconut
1 tbsp udad dal or split skinned black gram
1 tbsp chana dal or Bengal gram
1 tbsp jeera or cumin seeds
1 tbsp rai or mustard
A pinch of hing or asafetida
3 dried red chilies
½ cup peanuts
A sprig of curry leaves
1 tbsp oil
Salt

Method:

Cook the rice and let it cool. A day old rice is also fine to use.

Deseed and grate the mangoes. I like to grate half and chop half of the mangoes, your choice.

Heat oil and add chana dal, udad dal, cumin seeds and red chili.

Fry until light brown.

Grind this along with mustard, coconut and asafetida into a fine paste.

Heat oil in a big pan and add curry leaves and peanuts.

When peanuts are done, add the paste and the mangoes. Cook for a minute and add the rice.

Mix well, take off the heat and serve with coconut chutney.

Pumpkin Rice

 

Rice is a fundamental food in many cultural cuisines around the world. It has ability to provide fast and instant energy, regulate and improve bowel movements, and stabilize blood sugar levels, while also providing an essential source of vitamin B1 to the human body. Do you know that rice slows down the aging process? When I learned Vedic meditation from Tim Mitchell (http://www.vedicmeditation.eu/en/ayurveda/), he told me that after the age of fifty, one should eat rice and not wheat.

We love rice and I am always on the look out to create new preparations with rice. Here is a nice dish that combines pumpkin with rice.

Ingredients:

1 cup rice
200 gms pumpkin
Salt
2 tbsps Oil
1 Bay leaf
½ tsp grated ginger
1 green chilli cut fine
A few curry leaves
¼ tsp Cumin seeds
¼ cup roasted and ground pea nuts
1 tsp sugar
2 tbsps water

Method:

• Cook the rice and keep aside.
• Clean and cube the pumpkin, smear with oil, add salt, roast in the pre heated oven at 250 degrees for ½ hour to 45 minutes. Keep a small bowl of water in the center of the pumpkin pieces so that they won’t dry out.
• Cut the roasted pumpkin into small pieces.

pumpkin
• Heat oil in a thick bottomed vessel; add cumin seeds, when they splutter, add the bay leaf, grated ginger, cut green chilli, and curry leaves. Stir for ten seconds.
• Add the pumpkin pieces, sugar and mix well.
• Add the cooked rice, salt, roasted and ground peanuts, and 2 table spoons of water.

ground nut
• Mix well and remove from the fire after about 4 minutes. Serve hot.

Pumpkin rice

 

Kala Chana Pulao

Kala Chana Pulao
Kala Chana Pulao

There are two kinds of cooks. Those who plan ahead, and those who open the refrigerator when they are hungry and wonder what they should make. I belong to the second category. I have, believe it or not, had to train myself to plan ahead, because as a result of my nature, I ended up never getting to make things like idly, or anything that needed planning.

Anyway, this dish came about as a result of exactly that lack of planning. I was visiting my sister, it was a lazy afternoon and suddenly we realized that we didn’t have a plan. It turned out that there was some soaked kala chana. And rice. I was too lazy to make kadala curry AND rice. So I just threw everything into one pot. We liked the result so much that I had to note the recipe down and email it to everyone 😀

Serves 2
Time: 30 min

Ingredients:

1 cup kala chana
1 cup rice
1 cup chopped vegetables – baby corn, potato, carrot
½ cup chopped onion
1 tsp chopped green chili
1 tsp chopped ginger
1 tsp chopped garlic
½ tsp haldi/ turmeric powder
¼ tsp chili powder
½ tsp dhania/  coriander powder
2 sprigs curry leaves
½ tsp mustard seeds
¼ cup fresh coconut, grated
2 tbsp coriander leaves
1 tbsp coconut oil or ghee

Method:

Soak overnight, and pressure cook kala chana in 2-3 cups water for 10 min.

Drain and reserve the water.

In a pressure cooker, heat oil or ghee, add mustard seeds, curry leaves, chopped ginger and garlic, and green chili. Add onion.

Add the vegetables and chana and cook for a couple of min, then add the rice. Add 2 cups water (can use the water in which the chana was cooking), salt, haldi, chili and coriander powder. Pressure cook for 5 min.

When done, add grated coconut and chopped coriander leaves. Yummy pulao is ready!!

Understanding Rice

Rice is staple food in many countries. And for good reason! Rice is very nutritious – when eaten in the right form. It is such a pity that the beauty of food took precedence over it’s nutritive value, and today brown rice is consumed only by the health conscious.

Unpolished Red Matta Rice

There are many, many varieties of rice.

Unpolished, red matta rice is the raw version of the parboiled rice that is commonly consumed in Kerala and Tamil nadu.

Brown Rice
Brown Rice

Most other varieties of rice, when unpolished, are usually a lighter brown and are commonly called Brown rice.

Unpolished rice retains the most nutritive content of the grain. Rice is very nutritious. It has selenium, manganese, naturally occurring oils, antioxidants and is also rich in fiber. Click here to read about the benefits of eating brown rice. Those who initially experiment with brown rice find the texture unappealing, but with a little practice it is possible to cook it so it is soft.

Parboiled 'Red' Matta rice
Parboiled ‘Red’ Matta rice

‘Red rice’ as it is commonly called, is parboiled rice. This is red rice which is boiled with it’s husk on, before being polished. Because of the boiling, the rice absorbs the nutrition from the husk. So, while this rice is definitely more nutritious than white rice, it contains less fibre than unpolished rice. Some Brahmin communities in India do not eat twice cooked foods, and this rice is avoided by them as it has been boiled once already.

Polished Sona Masoori rice
Polished Sona Masoori rice

There are really many, many varieties of rice in the world. Believe it or not, 90,000 types of rice are known of, out of which 40,000 types are cultivated in the world. Here are a few varieties that we commonly use.

Sona masuri rice is the most popular variety in Karnataka. It is typical to find 4-5 grades of this rice. It’s grain is fairly short and it has a soft texture if cooked right.

 

Polished Basmati rice
Polished Basmati rice

Basmati rice is used very commonly in North India. Good quality Basmati rice has very, very long grain, almost an inch long. Basmati rice has a wonderful aroma and is usually soaked for half an hour before cooking so that each grain is separate when it is cooked by boiling. If you are making pulao/ pilaf or biryani, this is the best rice to use.

 

Polished Jasmine rice
Polished Jasmine rice

Jasmine rice comes from Thailand and has a delicate, floral aroma. It is usually cooked by steaming or by absorption method. The texture of cooked Jasmine rice is usually soft and slightly sticky. This is the rice you should use if you are making a South East Asian dish.

 

Polished Risotto rice
Polished Risotto rice

Risotto rice (Arborio) is from Italy and is used in making risottos. This rice is usually cooked very slowly, adding boiling water or stock ladle by ladle. The result is a very creamy rice texture.

Health Benefits of Eating Brown Rice

When see advertisements of rice on TV, they flaunt how white and shiny the rice looks. This is nothing to celebrate. The whiteness of the grain tells you how much goodness you have scrubbed off the grain.

Most people eat it because they are simply used to it. But when you think about it, it is such a pointless exercise – you take rice, carefully scrape off all it’s nutrition, and then you eat it. Later, you pay big money to the vendors to sell you tablets which were made from the scraped off nutrition, to fix your health. Is it worth it?

The Nutrition

The process that produces brown rice removes only the outermost layer i.e. the hull of the rice kernel and is the least damaging to its nutritional value. The complete milling and polishing that converts brown rice into white rice destroys 67% of the vitamin B3, 80% of vitamin B1, 90% of the vitamin B6, 50% of manganese, 50% of phosphorus, 60% of iron, and all of the dietary fiber and essential fatty acids. Brown rice as an excellent source of manganese, and a good source of the minerals selenium and magnesium.

The nutrients that brown rice contains are:

  • Manganese-energy production plus antioxidant protection
  • Rich in fiber and selenium
  • Phyto nutrients with health-promoting activity equal to or even higher than that of vegetables and fruits

Benefits of eating Brown Rice:

Good for weight loss

White rice just makes a sticky mess inside your digestive tract because it is refined. Brown rice on the other hand, provides your body fiber, to smooth out the movement in the tract. This means better digestion and thereby lower weight.

Cardiovascular Benefits

Multiple studies have shown that brown rice can lower blood pressure and reduce the risk of atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries). It is also proven that brown rice helps to maintain normal cholesterol and blood sugar levels. The lignans in brown rice also protect again heart disease. It also reduces the risk of heart attach and stroke.

Reduces Type 2 Diabetes

Studies conducted in India showed that substituting white rice with brown rice for daily consumption helped significantly reduce glucose levels and lower serum insulin. This single change in food habit led to a 20% reduction in glucose levels and 60% reduction in the fasting insulin concentration.

Other Health Benefits

  • Protective against breast cancer
  • Reduces risk of metabolic syndrome
  • Reduces the severity of asthma
  • Reduces frequency of migraine headaches
  • Reduces risk of heart attack and stroke

Further Reading:

WHFoods Brown rice
The Health Benefits of Whole Grains

Cooking Rice

Most of the world cooks rice by dropping it in boiling water. Things are a bit different in India, where we use pressure cookers, which change things up. I will talk about both methods of cooking here. Obviously, different varieties of rice need to be cooked differently. Basmati takes a lot less water, sona masuri, depending on it’s age, can take even more water than mentioned here, and brown rice takes double the time to cook.

Usually, 1 cup of rice is enough for 2 people.

The Pressure-Cooker Method

When using pressure cooker, people use two methods of checking. Most women count the ‘whistles’, which means the number of whistles after the first whistle. I know that some women cook on the max setting throughout, but I prefer to reduce the flame to minimum after the first whistle.

Proportions:
Basmati Rice: 1 cup rice, 1 cup water
Sona Masoori Rice: 1 cup rice, 2 cups water
Brown Rice: 1 cup rice, 3 cups water

Method:

    • Wash the rice twice.
    • Put the rice into the pressure cooker and add the water.
    • Cook on high flame until the first whistle.
    • TIME: Reduce the flame to minimum and cook for 5 minutes. (10 min for brown rice)

OR

  • WHISTLE: Reduce the flame and cook until the next whistle.

Note: If you have an induction cook top, you will need to place the rice inside of another vessel within the pressure cooker, otherwise the rice at the bottom will burn.

The Open Cooking Method

  • Wash the rice twice.
  • For cooking 1 cup rice, bring about 4-5 cups of water to a boil.
  • Pour the rice in, let it come to a boil again and then reduce the flame and let it simmer.
  • Do NOT cover the vessel unless you are standing right next to it, or the foam will push the lid over and spill.
  •  Boil for exactly 10 min (brown rice might take a bit more than 20).
  • Inspect the grain of rice – if there is a ridge along the length of the grain, then it is cooked well. Taste about 1/4 teaspoonful, to make sure that it is cooked properly.
  • Cover the vessel with a lid, leaving a narrow gap on one edge. Tilt it in the sink until all the water is drained. This water can also be poured to the plants, it is very nourishing.
  • For best results, let it sit for another 5-10 min. It will continue to cook in it’s own heat and become softer.
  • Note: To get the rice to look perfect, every grain separate from the other, add 2 pinches of cooking soda, 1 tsp of oil and salt to the water before you pour the rice in. Cooking soda is not a good thing to eat regularly, so I do this only if it is a special occasion.

The Microwave Method

Proportions:
1 cup rice
2 cups water, heated

Method:

  • Wash the rice twice.
  • Put the rice and add hot water.
  • Cover and cook on HIGH for about 6 minutes.
  • Let stand covered for 10 minutes
  • Optionally, you could soak the rice for 10 minutes and then microwave it covered for 15 min