Vegetable Pulao/ Vegetable Rice

I am addicted to rice. More of a bane than boon, this addiction has led to very difficult situations, especially because I cannot sleep at night unless I have had at least a little bit of rice. There have been instances when I woke up at midnight (or even at 1 pm!) and cooked rice and ate with pickle or curd. I do not think this has anything to do with being a South Indian (a Mallu), because my parents have always had chapathis for dinner. However, Amma always ensured that there was rice for me at night since I insisted on eating rice even if I had 1 or 2 chapathis.

Of course, this addiction has also led to serious weight issues as well, especially after motherhood when I totally gave up any form of exercise, and all that carbohydrate got converted to fat! All diets go for a toss when I give into the tempation for rice after 1-2 days. 

Anyway, though my staple diet is rice, I have not posted many rice based dishes on my blog yet! The only two I could find are Ajwain Rice and Curd Rice. I realized this after Nags announced that she is hosting Monthly Mingle #33 - Ravishing Rice Recipes at Edible Garden. Monthly Mingle is an event started by Meeta.

I wanted to post something simple, but I decided to overcome my laziness and dedicate a post to Amma's version of Vegetable Pulao/ Vegetable Rice. I give it the alternate name of Vegetable Rice because I am not very sure if this fits into the definition of a Pilaf or Pulao. Whatever the name, I love this dish because of the vegetables and the preparation.

To make the Vegetable Rice in the picture, you will need:

Basmati Rice - 4 cups (serves 6)

Water - 6 cups (or per instructions for the Basmati Rice)

Tomatoes - finely chopped - 4-5

Onions - chopped lengthwise - 2 large

Ginger Garlic Green chilly paste - 3-4 tbsp (about 2 green chillies only)

Spring Onions 

(You can use any vegetable you prefer. We added spring onions because it happened to be in the fridge and did not add potatoes because we ran out of potatoes)

Peas - 1 cup

Carrot - chopped - 2 

Beans - chopped - about 200 gm

Cauliflower florets - 2 cups 

Coriander leaves - chopped

Bread - small pieces - 2 cups

Cloves - 5-6

Whole pepper corns - 6-8

Cinnamon - small broken sticks - 2-3

Cardamom - 3-4 pods

Cashew and Raisins - as desired

Turmeric powder - 1/2 tsp

Coriander powder - 1 tsp

Cumin seeds powder - 1 tsp

Red chilly powder- 2 tsp

Garam Masala powder - 1 tsp

Salt - 1/2 tsp for rice, to taste for the vegetables

Ghee or butter - 2 tbsp for rice, 1 tsp each for onions, dry fruits, and bread

Vegetable oil - 2 tbsp

Method:

• Heat 2 tbsp of ghee in a large pan, add the whole pepper, cinnamon, cardamom, cloves and after roasting a little, add the washed basmati rice and roast for a few minutes stirring slowly, and remove to another bowl
  
• In the electric rice cooker, bring 6 cups of water to boil and add the rice with 1/2 tsp of salt and leave to cook

• Heat another tsp of ghee in the pan and add one chopped onion to this and roast well until dark brown and keep aside
  
• Similarly, roast the bread and cashews and raisins separately in a tsp of ghee and keep aside
  

• Heat 2 tsp of vegetable oil and saute the srping onions separately and keep aside
  
• Heat 2 tbsp of vegetable oil in a pan and saute the remaining chopped onion along with ginger garlic paste
  
• Add tomatoes and once the tomatoes are done, add all the vegetables - carrot, peas, beans, cauliflower - along with turmeric, coriander, cumin seeds powder,  garam masala, and salt to taste, cook covered on low flame
  

Do not add water unless absolutely necessary (tomato and vegetables give out water which is sufficient)

• Once the vegetables are cooked, add the spring onions and mix well 
  

• In the rice cooker, start layering the rice and vegetables and cashews, raisins, bread, onions as you would in a biriyani
  

First, add one glass of water, then rice, then vegetables, then bread, then cashew and raisins, then onions, and repeat layers until all are added and leave in 'keep warm' mode so that all the flavours are absorbed by the rice

• Garnish with the onions, cashews, raisins, bread and chopped coriander leaves
  

Serve with raita of choice

We had ours with mint chutney and cucumber raita.

This is my entry to Monthly Mingle #33 - Ravishing Rice Recipes