Carrot Rice with Challas

I am always in look out for quick one-bowl rice recipes, as my husband prefers home-cooked lunch and he has to leave home sharp at 6:45 in the morning for work...thanks to Dubai traffic. So you can imagine my kitchen on a normal day morning.. the breakfast, milk, tea, coffee need to be ready 6:15 am and lunch box to be ready by 6:45. I also have to pack 2 tiffin boxes for the kiddos..and no junk items allowed in the school. So that's a lot of work in the morning, but atleast satisfied that the family is eating healthy stuff.

The carrot rice is one easy recipe, which I accidentally discovered one day when I had to prepare lunch in 15 min and all I had as curry/sidedish was a carrot thoran. So I just cooked some white rice and mixed with the thoran. From then on, carrot rice has been my trusted partner on very busy mornings. You can have it along with Challas or simply curd and pickle. Its simple, yet delicious and healthy. Here goes the recipe.

Ingredients

Carrot - 1 big, chopped fine (I just popped it into the food processor, and pulsed twice)
Big onion - 1 medium, finely chopped
Green chilly - 2, finely chopped
Garlic - 1 clove, finely chopped
Ginger - 1 inch piece, finely chopped
(Again, I used food processor for chopping onion, chilly, garlic and ginger..all will be done in a matter of seconds!!)
Curry leaves, parsely - optional

Basmati rice / Jeerakasala rice - 2 cups, soaked in water for 10 minutes and drained
Hot water / water - 4 cups

Oil - 1 tbsp
Mustard seeds - 1/2 tsp



Method

1. Heat oil in a deep bottom heavy pan.
2. Crackle the mustard.
3. Add the chopped onion, ginger, garlic, chillies. Saute them till the raw smell goes.
4. Add the chopped carrots. Saute for couple of minutes.
5. At this point, if you want to spice up your dish, you can add chilly powder.
6. Add 4 cups of water, and allow it to boil
7. Add salt.
8. Once water boils, add the drained rice, stir gently and cover and cook on the lowest flame. The rice should be cooked in about 10-15 minutes' time depending on the variety of rice you are using and also on the soaking time.
9. Once cooked, and all the water evaporated, remove the lid and fluff up the rice with a fork. Do not close the lid fully as it will over cook.
Your healthy, delicious carrot rice is ready!!

Challas

If you haven't tastes this salad yet, you are definitely missing out on something!! Trust me..you really are missing out!! It is such a tasty and healthy salad which can never go wrong. Try it for yourself and see.

I think this was authentic salad used Syrian Christians long back, before the salad with curd took over. As per our tradition, we do not use curd along with meat or fish dishes. So in earlier days, for weddings and other functions, this challas was served along with meat cutlets.

Ingredients

Big onion - 1 small, sliced

Green chilly - 1, slit

Thick coconut milk - 1 cup

Vinegar - 1 tbsp

Salt - as per taste

Mashed potato - 2 tbsp (optional)

Grated carrot - 1 tbsp (optional)

Method

Take the sliced onion in a bowl and add salt and vinegar. Mix up these three thoroughly with your hand and squeeze the juice out. So that will leave you just with onions, with all unwanted juices removed. Now add the thick (yes, it should be really thick to get the authentic taste..I used 2 cups of loosely pasked grated coconut to get 1 cup of milk) coconut milk and add salt if more is needed.

Add the slit green chilly.

If you want to make the salad little more thick, you can add the mashed potato.

Also if you want to make it a bit more colourful, add some grated carrots.

There you are!! Enjoy your meal...