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Lemon Rice: South Indian lunch or Breakfast offering
By GM for The Planet Food
My love for south Indian food perhaps stems from early memories of visiting some of the most amazing south Indian food places in Delhi like the Andhra Pradesh Bhavan, which serves the most authentic Andhra food (veg and non-veg) and the Swaagath restaurant in defencecolony, where surprisingly the fish curry is more flavoursome and fresh than alot places I’ve eaten even in coastal India.
Amongst the easiest Indian snack meals (as I call these foods whichcan just as easily be snacks or a meal by themselves) are perhaps the widerange of rice dishes that are found in all southern states in India. Each region, of course has its own spice mark and principal ingredient (apart from the obvious rice). The most fun and relieving cooking fact about these dishes isthat, if you don’t have the time or ingredients, apart from rice, you reallydon’t need any other cereal or vegetable to be added in it! So, no chopping ormuch prepping! Lemon rice is one such exciting snack, which depending upon the time of day you eat it, can just as easily be served as a meal or a snack.
Recipe:
Cooking Time: 10 minutes
Ingredients:
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1 cup Rice
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Juice of ½ Lemon (medium sizedlemon)
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½ tsp Mustard seeds
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½ tsp Heeng (asafoetida)
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Dry red whole chilli (roundpreferably) -2
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½ tsp Split black gram
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½ tsp Bengal gram
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1 stem of Curry leaves
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½ cup peanuts
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½ tsp Turmeric powder
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Salt as per taste
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1 Tbsp Vegetable Oil (I useground nut oil)
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½ bowl Fresh coriander leaves
Process:
1. Wash and boilrice with a pinch of turmeric
2. Once boiled, keepthe rice to cool on the side
3. Now in a pan heat a Tbsp of oil.Once the oil is hot, add the mustard seeds, once the mustard seeds startpopping, add the Bengal gram and split black gram. Once the grams startpopping, reduce the flame and add the red chillies, curry leaves, turmericpowder, asafoetida and peanuts and roast them and switch off the flame (don’tlet them burn)
4. Add the lemon juice, salt to the pan(with the flame switched off) and then add the rice to this and mix everythingwell together in the pan
6. Put into aserving bowl and garnish with Fresh coriander leaves.
Tip: You can also substitute the peanuts with cashew nuts and youcan garnish with a handful of freshly grated coconut also
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