Coconut Rice

coconut Rice

Coconut rice

There are certain food preparations which come under the festival recipes and coconut rice is one of them.
Strangely we make this so often along with Lemon rice that we no longer consider it as a dish to be prepared only during festival times.

As far as I am concerned , this dish is a great life saver for quick school lunch box, office lunch , or for the days when you want to beg off from cooking! Yes chefs do need their me time too . Yet we cannot leave our family to the mercy of only bread and butter , being hard core foodies.Making coconut rice is a cinch when you want to reduce cooking time and avoid many side dishes. Just one big container of either leftover rice or freshly cooked rice and you can make at least three different rice preps in one go under 30 minutes.

Coconut rice

Coconut rice

Ingredients:

2 cups plain raw rice or basmati .

1/2 cup freshly grated coconut/desiccated coconut

For tempering

1/2 tsp mustard seeds

1/2 tsp Chana dal/Bengal gram

1/2 tsp Split udad dal /black gram

Sprigs of curry leaves for garnish

3 red chillis

salt to taste

2 tbsp oil

Pinch of asafoetida powder

2 tbsp skinned peanuts roasted .

Method

1. Pressure cook rice with sufficient water to get nice fluffy rice.

2. Cool the rice when the pressure cooker has cooled and opened. Fluff the rice with a fork to retain the fine grainy appearance.

3. Take a wide pan, add the oil, crackle mustard seeds, fry the chana dal and the udad dal till golden add some sprigs of curry leaves, red chillis, pinch of asafoetida powder and some salt. Finally add the grated coconut and keep roasting till the coconut remains golden but very aromatic.

4. Add roasted peanuts also if you wish or keep it simple.

5. Mix the cooled rice and stir well . Serve coconut rice as it is or with roasted papad or fried appalams.

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