Capsicum-Coconut Rice

It's sunday today, raining cats and dogs since morning....Our typical sunday menu would be some variety of dosa for the breakfast, a nov-veg curry + a dessert for the lunch, Rotis with left over curry for the dinner...we normally prefer to buy meat/fish the day we cook them...There's an Asian Halal shop very close to our house and hence we buy the meat on Sunday itself and cook immediately....

But today Suman's been a lion till mid morning...I was not that keen to walk to the shop getting myself drenched in the rain...So I decided on a veggie meal for the lunch....It's a very common practice in our houses back in India to have non-veg on sundays...No hurry burry packing for lunch boxes, so mom could liesurely cook nv items which normally take longer time. If at all someone visits our home in between 10AM-12Noon on a Sunday morning, he/she'll for sure enjoy the aroma from our kitchen (this emanates while our amma grinds kuskus, dry coconut flakes, cinnamon, cloves with ginger and garlic)...You'll have to take my word abt this...Even today amma, attamma would have made the same masala for the curry....

From my yesterday's pizza preparation I had some left over sliced capsicum and mushrooms in the fridge. So I thought of making some fried rice kind of recipe...I generally don't prefer to use readymade garam masala powders for any of my recipes...that too on a weekend..'ll have plenty of time to prepare the masala powder by myself.....I add whatever I find in my kitchen cup-boards, take no measurements add whatever amount I feel like (depending upon my choice of spiciness for that dish), dry roast them and grind them in a mill...I take all the liberty under the sun to try each n every ingredient with different permutations and combinations..please excuse my grammatical mathematics....

Too much introduction for a recipe....hmmmm...'ll stop here...Here's the recipe I followed..

Ingredients:

Rice - 3 cups (cooked)

Onion - 1 sliced

Green chillies - 4 sliced

Capsicum - 2 sliced

Mushrooms - 1/2 cup sliced

Dessicated dry coconut - 1 table spoon (I used readymade coconut powder)

Ginger-garlic paste - 1 tea spoon

Salt - as per taste

Oil - 1 tablespoon

For the powder,

Cinnamon - 1 inch piece (broken into tiny pieces)

Cloves - 4

Cardamon pods - 3

Black peppercorn (miriyalu) - 10

Khuskhus (gasagasalu) - 1 table spoon

Procedure:

1. Dry roast the 5 ingredients (listed for powder) in a pan, let the mixture to cool down and grind into a coarse powder in a mill.

2. Heat Oil in a pan, add the ginger garlic paste and roast for 30 sec.

3. Add the green chillies, onion pieces and saute till onions turn transparent.

4. Add the coconut powder and mix well.

5. Now add the spices powder and then the vegetables (capsicum and mushrooms)

6. Add salt to this and mix well. Cover with a lid and cook for 5min on medium flame.

7. Finally add the rice and mix thoroughly. Cook for 3-5 min on low flame and turn off the flame.

Serve with raita. Tastes good on its own too....Roasted cashews can be added for garnishing.

Final Note: I hereby promise all the readers of my blog that this would be my last recipe for this weekend..No more torturing...'m bored too...:(