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Ready, Steady, Cook used to be one of the cookery-cum-gameshow programmes that I watched with great enthusiasm in those far-off days when I was unemployed (on the insistence of the Home Office in the UK, I should add, and not because I was too lazy to work) and had lots of time on my hands. At that time I was unfamiliar with most British TV productions, actors, celebrities and shows – not to mention, show formats - so it was all new to me.
I still remember how horrified I was by Anne Robinson’s incredible rudeness to the participants on her quiz show, The Weakest Link, the first time I watched it. I couldn’t imagine anyone from other quiz shows I’d seen thus far – say, Mastermind UK, or Mastermind in India (with Siddharth Basu) – being so rude and getting away with it. And there didn’t seem to be any real reason for such personal attacks on what was meant to be a cerebral show. It took a while for me to realise that it was only a gimmick with Anne Robinson (ah, those days of innocence) and she was probably not as evil in real life... but the whole thing still took some getting over. Certainly, there was no way I could have faced that level of nastiness with the equanimity displayed by her victims, had I been a contestant.
Equally, I also still remember how instantly I was drawn to Ainsley Harriot’s goofy good looks, ebullient personality and permanent good cheer on Ready, Steady, Cook. The show format was also something I’d never seen before, and I was totally impressed by the amazing spur-of-the-moment decisions by the chefs on the show to make this recipe or that recipe based on what was in the bags they were given. Oh, for those days of innocence... I didn’t realise that it was all rehearsed and the chefs most likely knew what food items they were going to get from the contestants and, therefore, very likely also knew what they would be making with it.
This I discovered only during the application process for the show, when a very dear friend, Ammani (who’s way more enterprising, energetic, enthusiastic and extroverted than I could ever hope to be) persuaded me to apply to the show as a participant along with her. We had to fill out forms telling them about ourselves, our interests, our achievements thus far, and so on. I guess this was to see if we would be interesting enough for the show (and I really do feel that the reason we didn’t make the show was my exhaustive list of non-achievements. Had Ammani gone for a different partner, it would have been a cinch for them.)
Anyhow, along with our life stories, we also had to list the ingredients that we would be bringing along for the chefs, assuming we met the show’s criteria. A-ha! That was when the penny dropped for me - and that was when all the chefs that I collectively admired so much collectively cracked at their weak point and collectively toppled off their pedestals, leaving behind only their feet of clay. (Most of them eventually clambered back on, but the pedestals were only footstools and their feet remained clayey.)
But like I said, in the beginning it was all new to me, and I watched the chefs with a level of awe that they probably didn’t totally deserve, taken in by what I thought was unrehearsed improvisation, watching the recipes they made – and all in just 20 minutes cooking time! The level of energy was always high, given the time constraints, and Ainsley Harriot's presence made the show all the more lively.
Another thing I came to realise as I watched episode after episode was that the recipes weren’t really new, as such. Perhaps they differed a little in their list of ingredients (compared to the classic originals on which the chefs based their recipes), but that was all, and the differences only arose because of what they were given to work with. There were staple recipes from various cuisines – stir fries, bhajis, curries, casseroles, etc – which featured again and again.
I’m not complaining, really. It was just something that came as a slightly surprised realisation. For instance, the classic fish-and-chips, with salt and vinegar and mushy peas on the side, would be re-marketed by a chef as “posh fish and chips” on the show – maybe the chips would be sprinkled with rosemary, or instead of deep-fried chips they would have pan-fried potatoes, or add herbs to the mushy peas, etc and so on. And definitely the plating would be as showy as possible, to accentuate the difference between the regular stuff dished out by your corner chippie and the chef-cooked posh fish-and-chips.
And thus, gentle reader, I finally, finally come to the point of this post – my recipe today, which is for “posh” bread upma. It’s posh because I didn’t use ordinary bread... instead, I made use of some whole-wheat walnut pave loaf and some stone-baked boule which were left over from the previous day’s meal.
They did make a difference, because using good bread always makes a difference. You can make bread upma with ordinary sliced white bread from your local Tesco, and it will be edible - but as like as not, the bread will not hold its own against the rest of the masala that makes up this dish, simple though the masala is.
I know, I know... you’re probably wondering why this fuss over bread upma, a perfectly common dish that requires no specialty ingredients or cooking process – just stale leftover bread as the base. But bread upma is a really savoury, very delicious quick meal when you’re short of ingredients and time. You can make it as basic as you like or jazz it up – and mine is sort of poshed up. Seriously, though, the bread I used took on the flavour of the masala but didn’t itself turn to mush. It retained some bite and the small pieces of walnut only added to the upma's overall yumminess.
Stale bread is preferable for this dish, because of its firmer texture. But stale good quality bread is best, because it really makes this dish posh. In the style of Ready Steady Cook, anyway.
Recipe for: Posh bread upma
Ingredients:
4 cups stale good quality bread, cut into bite sized cubes (I used walnut bread and stone-baked crusty boule)
5-6 salad potatoes, chopped into small cubes
2 medium tomatoes, chopped
2 onions, chopped
1 small leek, chopped
5-6 fresh green chillies (or to taste), sliced into thin rings
3 tbsp yogurt (I used low-fat Greek yogurt)
1/2 tsp turmeric powder 1/4 tsp asafoetida powder (optional)
1 tsp mustard seeds
1 tsp cumin seeds
a few curry leaves
1 tbsp oil
Salt to taste 3-4 tbsp roughly chopped coriander leaves for garnish
Method:
1. Heat the oil in a wide-bottomed pan and add the green chillies, curry leaves, cumin seeds and turmeric powder and asafoetida and mustard seeds. Cover the pan and let the mustard seeds pop.
2. Add the chopped onions and leek next,
stir well and cook on a medium high flame till the onions soften and turn translucent and the leek has wilted.
3. Now add the chopped tomatoes and cook till they soften and break down.
4. Next, add the cubed potatoes, stir well, cover and cook till the potatoes are done. Salad potatoes retain their shape even when cooked, but if you're using floury or mealy potatoes, make sure they dont break down completely.
5. When the potatoes are cooked, stir in the yogurt. Turn the heat up and stir-fry for 2 minutes, till the moisture from the yogurt reduces.
6. Add salt to taste and mix well. (Remember that the bread will have salt in it, so dont over-salt the masala). Add the bread now and mix carefully till the masala coats the bread evenly. 
7. Turn the heat to medium-low and fry the bread with the masala till it starts to crisp up a little at the bottom.
8. Sprinkle the coriander leaves, mix it all with a wide spatula and serve hot with tomato ketchup.
I’m sure everybody has an inner lazy person, but for most people, they stay firmly anchored on the inside. Whereas, with me, my inner lazy person has always been keen to remain on the outside and experience everything that comes my way. Occasionally my brisk and hard-working persona makes a visit to the outside, but on the whole those are rare occasions and the brisk inner me prefers to remain unseen. Come to think of it, perhaps the brisk inner me is actually the lazy inner me. Intriguing....
Or possibly not.
Anyway, grains and legumes that don’t need pre-soaking before use are excellent for the lazy cook (inner or outer persona, whichever), which is why whole green gram dal is a favourite with me. I feel it’s a homely sort of dal, and I’ve not seen it on many party menus or dinner menus for guests. There’s not much to making this dal, but only if you have a pressure cooker. Then it is a doddle. Since I haven’t bothered to cook whole green gram dal on the hob by boiling, I’ve no idea how long it might take. (I don’t like the idea of wasting fuel cooking most dals, legumes or beans by boiling, when I have a trusty pressure cooker that does the job in a jiffy. The few exceptions are quick-cook dals like split masoor or chana dal when I don’t want them mushy.)
The basic recipe I use for making this dal is just that – basic. Throw a couple of chopped tomatoes, chillies, garlic along with ½ cup green gram dal into a vessel, add water to cover, and pressure-cook for 3-4 whistles. Then it’s just a question of doing the tadka or seasoning, with or without fried onions, and voila! the dish is finished and ready for consumption.
This time too, I used the basic recipe to cook the dal, but upped it a notch by making a wet coconut masala for the seasoning. It tasted just fine... but I still would probably not consider this a dish for special occasions. It’s more an everyday dal with not much exotic about it. For Indians, at any rate.
Click here for another recipe using green gram dal
Recipe for: Green gram dal - 2
Ingredients:
1/2 cup whole green gram dal
2 medium tomatoes, chopped
3-4 green chillies (or to taste), slit
2 cloves garlic, chopped
2 medium onions, sliced thin
2 htbsp fresh coconut, grated
1 tsp coriander seeds
1 tsp cumin seeds
1/2 tsp garam masala
1 tsp oil
Salt to taste
Fresh coriander leaves, chopped, for garnish
1-1/2 cups water
Method:
1. Grind the coconut, coriander seeds and cumin seeds to a fine paste using 3-4 tbsp very warm water. Reserve.
2. Place the uncooked green gram, chopped tomatoes, slit chillies and garlic in a vessel and cook in a pressure cooker for 3 whistles. Remove when pressure drops naturally.
3. Heat the oil in a pan and fry the sliced onions till they turn soft and translucent.
4. Add the cooked green gram dal mixture along with 1/2 cup water (add more if there isnt much moisture in the cooked dal) and stir well. Add salt to taste along with garam masala and bring the mixture to a gentle simmer. Cook for 3-4 minutes.
5. Now add the ground coconut masala
and stir it in.
6. Simmer the dal for 3-4 minutes more (don't boil it), then add the chopped coriander.
7. Serve hot with chapaties or over plain rice.
The nice thing about this bread-and-butter pudding is that it needs only 1 tbsp sugar – the natural sweetness of bananas, sultanas and currants more than suffices, especially for those without a sweet tooth the size of Ayers Rock. And if you don’t wish to use even that 1 tbsp sugar (mainly to sprinkle on top, for caramelisation purposes), well, this becomes an entirely processed-sugar-free recipe. Not bad for a dessert, is it? Serve this pudding with sugar-free or low-sugar icecream, or light cream, and the sin points still wouldn’t add up as much as from, say, a slice of frosted chocolate cake with cream.
Pete, as usual, doesn’t like desserts which combine eggs and milk – even if the end result isn’t as custardy as custard-from-scratch. To his credit, he did try a spoonful of this banana bread-and-butter pudding and pronounced it “very tasty”… but it still didn’t encourage him to go for a separate portion of his own. Which is okay, because I’ll get to have this over the next 4 days. It makes for a pretty small(ish) pudding – three reasonable servings, or four small ones, or two large greedy ones. All without the addition of icecream, that is.
It would be best to use slightly overripe bananas in this recipe, as there is no extra sugar added (worth saying again, I think!). Served warm, this pudding is really rather nice on a cold evening. Recipe for: Banana bread-and-butter pudding
Ingredients:
4 slices bread
1 tbsp butter
3 tbsp sultanas
3 tbsp currants
1 large ripe banana, sliced
1 tbsp demerara sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 egg
1 cup (225ml) milk
Method:
1. Beat the egg and milk together with the vanilla extract. Reserve.
2. Cut the crusts off the bread.
3. Lightly butter one side of each slice and cut each slice into four.
4. Mix the sliced bananas with the sultanas and currants.
5. Butter a 1-litre baking dish lightly. Arrange half the pieces of bread, buttered side up, in the bottom of the baking dish.
6. Spoon half the banana-sultana mix over the bread.
7. Pour half the milk mixture over this, making sure to cover all the bread. Sprinkle 1/2 tbsp demerara sugar over.
8. Layer the remaining pieces of bread, buttered side up again,
then the remaining banana slices,
and pour the rest of the milk over.
Sprinkle the remaining 1/2 tbsp of demerara sugar over the top.
9. Press down gently and evenly to make sure that the bread pieces are all covered by the milk. Allow to soak for at least 30 minutes in the fridge.
10. Heat the oven to 180C and bake the pudding for 30-40 minutes or till the top layer of banana pieces are caramelised and the bread turns golden brown.
11. Serve warm as is, or with ice-cream or cream, if preferred.
Readers of this blog (mainly those who, like me, have an unfortunate tendency to remember boring and useless trivia on random topics/people) will probably know that I like the presence of coconut only in certain dishes and then only the way I’m used to it being made at home. Pieces or chunks of coconut in anything are a definite NO, coconut in sweets and cakes is pretty much no-thanks, and the presence of coconut in dishes where I do not like or expect coconut (such as in potato podimas or adai, sprinkled on dhokla or plantain fry, etc) is also not encouraged or particularly welcome in the super-exclusive club that is my mouth (its motto being “All rights of entry reserved. Strictly no admittance to aubergines or dead animal products. All coconut products will be vetted beforehand”).
As far as I’m concerned, coconut has to be finely grated – always, in dry dishes – or ground to a smooth paste, if it’s a gravy dish or thogayal/chutney.
So it shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise, then, that I’m not a fan of coconut milk – or, for that matter, elaneer or tender-coconut water, despite its reported refreshing qualities in the heat of summer and all that. (I’ll take a bottle of cold water any day.) Coconut milk to me is always associated with a sickly-sweet sort of taste. That said, though, I have tried it in Thai dishes (not made by me, though) and even cooked with it myself once or twice. Truth to say, although they would never be my first choice, the dishes did turn out better than average.
This is possibly the third time ever that I’ve used coconut milk, this time to make another version of tomato rice. Since I do like tomato rice, and I didn’t use too much coconut milk (and it was pretty thin coconut milk at that), it turned out better than better-than-average. In fact, I might even go so far as to say that it was pretty darn good. The tomato rice didn’t taste overwhelmingly of coconut milk, and the presence of coconut milk didn’t negate the presence of the spices/seasonings used, which is how I like it.
The rice was rich without being overly unctuous... although I have to admit that when it was cold, it had a greasy sort of mouth-feel (obviously because of the fat in the coconut milk, even watered-down as it was). That was not a pleasant experience for me or my tongue – only by the somewhat dubious virtue of me being me and my tongue being my tongue. When the rice was re-heated though, it wasn’t a problem.
Recipe for: Rich tomato rice
Ingredients:
1 cup basmati rice, washed, soaked in cold water for at least 15 minutes
3-4 fresh green chillies (or to taste), slit
1 tsp ginger, grated
1 tbsp sesame seeds
1 tsp cumin seeds
1/2 tsp turmeric powder
1 medium onion, chopped
3 medium tomatoes, chopped
1/2 cup frozen green peas
1 cup coconut milk (diluted to taste)
1/2 cup water
Salt to taste
1 tsp cooking oil
Method:
1. Heat oil in a pan (which has a tight-fitting lid), and add in order: green chillies if using, cumin seeds, grated ginger. Fry for 30 seconds, then add sesame seeds.
2. Stir for 30 seconds, and once the sesame seeds start popping, add the chopped onion.
3. Add turmeric powder now, and stir-fry till the onions turn soft and translucent. Then add the chopped tomatoes. Cook on medium heat till the tomatoes start to soften and break down.
4. Drain the soaked basmati rice and add it to the pan.
5. Stir well, turning up the heat to high, and keep stirring till any excess water evaporates (3-4 minutes, and the rice will start to clump together.)
6. Add the frozen green peas and stir till mixed with the rice and masala.
7. Add the coconut milk now, and the 1/2 cup of water.
Add salt to taste, then stir well. Bring the liquid to a brisk boil, then cover the pan with a lid (you can put a clean tea towel under the lid to absorb the steam, just make sure that the ends of the cloth don't trail down near the flame!). Turn the heat down and let simmer for 15 minutes. Then turn off the heat and let the rice sit undisturbed for 15 minutes. After that, take off the lid and fluff the rice gently with a fork.
Or if you're using a pressure cooker, let it come up to two whistles after maximum pressure, then turn off the heat. Open when the pressure drops.
Serve hot with a chilled raita.
I made this bread quite a while back, while in the grip of severe “baking bread from scratch” fever. That’s how these things get me – I start out all fired up, rather like a milk cooker which has lost its pressure valve and therefore can’t regulate the outlet of excitable steam and therefore bubbles over when the enthusiasm level heats up too much… and then the fire goes out.
Ideally, what I need is some sort of pressure valve that will let off the excess enthusiasm, or at least regulate the letting off of it so that it doesn't bubble over and extinguish itself...
How about that, I’ve just had an epiphany in front of everybody!
Anyway, I’m not really sure what makes this a Greek white bread, but that’s what the recipe said when it popped into my inbox, and that’s what I’m saying as well. Maybe it’s the olive oil? But the Italians and Spanish use olive oil too, so maybe not. Well, whatever. After all, What’s in a name? That which we call a bread by any other name would taste as sweet (sorry, Shakespeare) – or as nice, at any rate. This bread isn’t sweet, but it IS nice.
PS. The fire hasn’t actually gone out as regards baking bread by hand… but it has fizzled a little. I’m sure something will occur to turn the heat up again, and then just watch out! The bread will rise again.
Recipe for: Greek white bread
Ingredients:
3-3/4 cups of strong bread flour
1 1/2 cups of lukewarm water
2 tsp dry yeast
2 tablespoons of olive oil
1 teaspoon of salt
water for brushing
sesame seeds
Method:
1. Dissolve yeast in the warm water.
2. In a mixing bowl, combine 1-1/2 cups of flour, salt, oil, and yeast with water, and mix until thoroughly blended.
Cover tightly with plastic wrap and let sit for 30 minutes in a warm, draught-free place till it's somewhat bubbly.
2. Add 1-1/2 cups of flour to the yeast mixture and combine with hands to form a cohesive dough.
3. Turn out onto a floured work surface and knead in as much of the remaining flour as needed until the dough is smooth, elastic and non-sticky.
4. Shape into a loaf
brush with water and sprinkle sesame seeds on top.
5. Put the shaped loaf on a nonstick cookie sheet, and place on the middle rack in a cold oven for 15 minutes.
5. Turn on oven to 425°F (220°C) and bake on the middle rack for 30 minutes or until golden. Let cool before slicing.
This is one of Pete's recipes - a really basic potatoes dauphinoise, as far as I can make out. (Gordon Ramsay's version here, so you can see what the original recipe features.) He allowed me in the kitchen only because it's so simple that I couldn't get in the way of his cooking with my camera and ruin it - although I nearly did, as it turned out, so this may be the last recipe for anything cooked by Pete that features photos taken while Pete is in the kitchen! The usual reason - I got engrossed in a book and forgot to keep an eye on the oven (even though I was in the kitchen at the time... actually, sitting on the kitchen counter across from the oven so as to be able to *ahem* keep an eye on it *koff koff* ...)
Anyway, like I said, the recipe is extremely basic and features a minimum of ingredients... but turns out surprisingly tasty. You can add herbs of choice, or garlic, along with the salt and pepper, although Pete didn't this time. I admit to having been very sceptical about the outcome - featuring such remarks as "Is that it? Really? That's all? That's IT? Nothing else?" - although in the end, I was forced to eat my words... can't say they went down very well.
Although the potatoes did.
Recipe for: Potatoes a la Pete
Ingredients:
4-5 medium Maris Piper potatoes (or other waxy types)1 to 1-1/2 cups full-fat or semi-skim milk
2 tbsp butter
Salt to taste
Freshly milled black pepper, to taste
1/2 cup grated cheese of choice (Pete used mature cheddar)
Method:
1. Pre-heat the oven to 180C.
2. Slice the potatoes into even 1/2-cm thick slices (no need to peel them, although you can if you like).
3. Melt the butter and pour into a deep, heavy-bottomed oven-safe casserole (with lid). Swirl the butter to cover the bottom of the dish and a little bit up the sides.
4. Place a layer of potatoes in the pan. Sprinkle salt and pepper on top.
5. Continue layering the potatoes, sprinkling salt and pepper generously over each layer, until the potatoes are all used up.
6. Pour the milk into the casserole dish - it should come up about 3/4 of the way to the top layer.
7. Put the lid on the casserole dish and place the dish on a baking tray (in case of overflow).
Let it cook covered for 30 minutes or so. Then check to see if the potatoes are cooked by inserting the tip of a knife in the top layer. If they're done, remove the lid and leave the potatoes to bubble away for another 10 minutes.
The milk should have reduced by now to nearly nothing and the potatoes should be fork-tender.
8. Switch the oven off. Sprinkle grated cheese on top of the potatoes
and let it sit in the oven for a couple of minutes more, till the cheese begins to melt.
9. Serve hot as a side-dish.
Until recently, blood oranges were in the realm of “What the heck are they?”, as far as I was concerned. The name didn’t appeal terribly, either. Blood orange? What, a meat-lover’s fruit now? Did it taste like blood (ugh, gruesome thought)?
Then I googled around and learnt that blood oranges were so named because their interior is anything from a deep orangey-red to crimson in colour - totally unlike your regular orange which is just, well, orange. Some of the sources mentioned that blood oranges tasted better and had a sweeter fragrance than regular oranges.
Ok, so blood oranges were fancy citrus fruit grown in the US, in Spain and in Italy. And, they were pretty exotic because of being rare and difficult to get elsewhere, especially without great expense - which basically meant that unless I actually traveled to that part of Italy or Spain or the US, I was not very likely get an opportunity to strike up an acquaintance with any blood oranges.
That seemed pretty much that, so I set aside any such hope and refrained from printing off all the wonderful blood orange recipes so efficiently searched and presented by Google.
And then, in my local Sainsbury, I came across a pack of blood oranges. Four of them, nestling in a thermocol holder under a hard plastic cover.
The price was as exotic as the fruit, but I reverently put the pack in my trolley. After all, they were cheaper than the cost of traveling to Spain or Italy or the USA (but gosh, not by much!).
Then it was homeward bound in a lather of excitement, me barely able to wait to get inside the front door so that I could open up the pack and get face-to-face with my first ever blood oranges. Pete was left to carry the bags into the house and put everything away (a task I hate only next to vacuuming. Shopping is fun, but putting everything away is the polar opposite. Anybody agree?). Pete might have grumbled, but I have no recollection. I happen to subscribe to the school of thought which believes that foodies and food-blog writers should be left to gloat and fuss over their latest purchase or exotica without having to be bothered with the minutiae of home life. (Especially housework.)
Anyway, the thing about describing something is that words can only do so much to tell the reader what it actually tastes or feels or smells like. Photographs can show what it looks like, but the smell/taste/feel sensations remain woefully unconveyed (I hope that is a valid word.)
That’s why my first deep sniff of my first blood orange was such a heady affair – it was orangey, of course, but there was something more to it... it was more fruity and somehow almost perfumey. I was in for a bit of disappointment when I cut it open, though - I was expecting a deep ruby red, or at least a flame orange, all through, but only part of it was red... towards the centre it was like a regular orange. And the taste... it was glorious! A burst of sweet with the slightest hint of tart, it was so good that I was half tempted to eat them all, never mind making anything with them.
But I desisted because I had to make the most of these hard-to-get fruit. After scouting for recipes, I settled on a buttermilk blood-orange cake. I love orange-flavoured cakes, as I've probably mentioned before, and this one was absoutely glorious. It may have been the blood oranges, it may have been my imagination, but the loaf-cake was probably the most addictively orangily good one I've ever made. I took two slices of it every day to work for a week, and it stayed beautifully moist for 3 whole days. It didnt exactly crumble to bits thereafter, though... it just was a bit drier than fresh - but the flavour and taste were just as lovely. This loaf-cake is a sure-fire repeat recipe.
Recipe for: Buttermilk blood-orange cake
Ingredients:
1-1/2 cups buttermilk
2 cups self-raising flour
1/2 tsp baking powder Zest of one medium orange
1/2 cup fresh blood-orange juice (no problem with having pulp in it)
1/2 cup oil
1 medium egg
1-1/4 cups sugar
2 tsp vanilla extract
Method:
1. Mix together the self-raising flour, sugar, baking powder and grated orange zest.
2. Put the oil and orange juice in a large bowl along with the vanilla extract.
3. Whisk in the egg until well incorporated and the mixture is lightly frothy.
4. Then stir in the buttermilk. Now add the flour to the wet mixture.
5. Stir till the batter is smooth. Don't over beat.
6. Pour the batter into a 2-pound loaf pan sprayed with Pam.
7. Bake in a 180C oven for 40 minutes or till the cake tests done. Since ovens vary in performance, start checking the cake at 30 minutes and test every 5 minutes to see if it's done.
8. Leave in the pan for 10 minutes, then turn out on to a wire rack to cool completely.
One of the most dismaying things that can happen to a food blogger is to find that somehow the bandwagon has been missed; that by some freak mischance, a recipe featured possibly in 99.99% of all food blogs – Indian food blogs, I hasten to add – has somehow been omitted from your own blog! Oh, that feeling of being left out in the cold, alone and separate from the buzzing masses of bloggers-with-recipes-in-common is too terrible to describe on a family-friendly blog like this one... so I will, in the interests of preventing readers from weeping all over their keyboards while reading, not describe the pathos of the situation any more.
Seriously, though, I was rather taken aback, while idly flipping down the “Rice” category on my blog, to find that I didn’t seem to have a recipe for tomato rice. It’s not that I haven’t made tomato chutney or thokku – I do have a couple of recipes for those, and one of the ways to make tomato rice is to mix that thokku with cooked rice. It’s the most basic of ways to make this savoury flavoured rice, so it doesn’t require any more instruction than “Mix the tomato thokku with cooked rice in a proportion that is pleasing to your palate”. (In fact, stopping that instruction at “rice” is probably enough!)
Still, to not have a recipe for tomato rice from scratch, on a blog like mine which purports to list simple basic recipes – well, that was so not on! So I rummaged in my fridge and came up with two ripe plum tomatoes, a few cherry tomatoes and a regular tomato, along with a salad onion – and some further rooting about revealed the existence of a lone red onion as well.
That was plenty for tomato rice for two... and so, my blog now has my version of tomato rice, and I am no longer in the cold. What a warm, fuzzy feeling of acceptance and belonging it is, to be sure… even if it’s only in my mind!
Recipe for: Tomato rice
1 cup basmati rice, soaked for 30 minutes
2 cups chopped tomatoes (the better the quality, the better the final taste)
1 large red onion, chopped
1 salad onion with the green bits, chopped (optional)
1 tsp grated ginger
1 tsp cumin seeds
½ tsp garam masala
3-4 fresh green chillies, sliced into thin rings (or to taste)
1/3 tsp asafetida powder
½ tsp turmeric powder
Salt to taste
1-1/2 cups water
2 tsp oil
1 tsp butter
Coriander leaves for garnish
Method:
1. Heat the oil in a pan with a tight-fitting lid. Add the cumin seeds, sliced green chillies, turmeric and asafoetida powders and fry them for 40 seconds on high heat, stirring.
2. Add the chopped onions and mix well, frying till the onions become soft and translucent.
3. Now add the grated ginger and stir it in.
4. Next, toss in the chopped tomatoes
and fry till they begin to turn soft.
5. Now add the drained basmati rice and stir it in.
Fry this mixture on high heat, stirring all the time, till it starts to become somewhat dry and tries to clump together.
6. At this point, pour in the 1-1/2 cups water, add the salt and stir it in well. Bring the mixture to a boil.
7. Stir in the butter, if using.
8. Put the lid on the pan once the water is boiling, then turn down the heat and let it cook undisturbed for 15 minutes. Then turn off the heat and let the rice sit covered for up to 30 minutes, but a minimum of 15. Now take off the lid, sprinkle the coriander leaves and gently mix with a fork.
9. Serve warm with a chilled raita and potato chips. This rice tastes even better after a few hours, so it can be made in advance and reheated just before serving.
I’ve never quite understood the phrase “in fits and starts” – but since I had (hissy) fits the last couple of days while fiddling around with HTML code and headers and backgrounds and so on, I guess I can consider this post a start (yet another) to continuing this blog. A good friend suggested gently that I should bring the blog out of its (previous) darkness into light – and I thought that a very good idea. Perhaps a brighter look to the blog would fit in with a fresh start and result in more posts... because, as evident from the blank silence, I’ve not been particularly inspired these last few weeks.
The problem, while lying always with me, was (and is) compounded by the fact that the blogs I really like always have interesting recipes, good write-ups and stunning photographs (which is why I like them – obviously!). But the more I looked at them, the less I felt like doing anything with mine – why bother, when they were all so much better than anything I could cobble together? In an ideal world, I suppose excellence (in others) should inspire increased effort (from oneself), but sometimes that’s not how things work out.
However, I didn’t feel any better by thinking of all the dozens of food blogs that in my opinion didn’t make the cut... there really isn’t that much satisfaction to be gained from preening about being better than not-quite-good-enough, is there? Not unless your sights are set low.
Anyhow, I have to say that fiddling with the template and figuring out (some of) the code to change things did make me feel better. In fact, I felt quite pleased to have made the changes and come up with a reasonable result, considering I know practically nothing of HTML or any other code. I hope to be able to use my own photographs in the header and background, eventually - but for now, this will do. My template and my outlook are both no longer blue...
But here’s a query from a code-challenged person to those well-versed in such esoteric matters... you might have noticed that the drop-down boxes on the sidebar are all different widths. The code for this from my previous blogger template (Minima, as is this one) no longer works on the new updated blogger template - it just refuses to take the code. It doesn’t come up with an error message, it simply removes the relevant bit. Any ideas on how to get around this will be gratefully accepted. If you'd prefer to email me, the email address is shyam69@gmail.com. Heartfelt thanks in advance!
