Mushroom Egg Fried Rice - the Indo-Chinese way

One of my top easy recipes to pack for a weekday lunch would be some Indo-Chinese based Rice variety. On days when I feel lazy or forget to get some prep work done for the next day lunch, this is what I would do, chop up some veggies like mushroom, bell-pepper, carrot, throw in some sauces, mix it with basmati rice, and there my lunch is ready in minutes. So this Egg-Mushroom Fried rice happened on a day when I had to finish up the packet of mushroom in my stock and a red bell-pepper. Immediately the image of white rice with mushroom, red bell-pepper, scrambled egg and some greens popped into my head and I started wondering how colorful it would look to capture this on a photo :). It does look pretty doesn't it? Trust me, it tastes great too! So lets learn how to make this simple yet tasty Mushroom-Egg Fried Rice.

Ingredients

Serves - 2
Spice Level - Moderate
Prep Time - 15 Min
Cook time - 15 Min

Basmati Rice - 1 Cup
Eggs - 1
Mushroom - 10 button mushroom , sliced into medium sized pieces
Red Bell-pepper - 1/2 a piece,sliced thinly
Spring onion greens - 2 Tbsp
Onion [yellow/white] - 1 , sliced thinly
Ginger-garlic Paste - 1.5 Tsp
Green chilli - 1 , slit length-wise
Light Soy Sauce - 1 tsp
Green chilli sauce - 1 Tsp
Salt and pepper to season
Oil - 2 Tbsp

How do you do it.

1. Soak Basmati Rice in water for 15 min. Drain and cook with 2 Tsp salt and 1.5 cups of water. Once cooked, spread the rice on a plate and drizzle some oil on it, mix well and cool. The rice has to be cooled before mixing with the veggies for it to not get mashed up.

2. Meanwhile, heat a pan, drizzle some oil on it, break and egg into it. Add some salt and pepper on to it, scramble it well with a wooden spatula and cook until its done, about 2 minutes. Keep this scrambled egg aside.

3. Heat oil in a kadai, add the onions and saute well until they are cooked. Add the ginger-garlic paste and green chilli and saute for a couple of more minutes.

4. Add the chopped mushroom and bell pepper now and increase flame and cook until the veggies are half cooked and are crunchy.

5. Decrease flame now and add in the soy sauce and green chilli sauce and mix well. Also add a little salt, remember we have cooked the rice with salt already.

6. Add the rice now to the kadai, and mix well to combine everything . Saute on low flame for a minute or two, add some pepper powder, check for seasoning, add more salt if required and mix well.

7. Switch off flame now, add the spring onion greens and the scrambled eggs and give it a good mix with the rice.

Serve with any side dish of you choice or just with some tomato ketchup and chips.

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Broccoli Parathas

Broccoli Paratha is a recipe I had bookmarked a very long time ago and the regular habit is to bookmark and forget and that's what I did :).  Seeing Broccoli eeveryday at the vegetable shop reminded of this recipe and I had to make it. It called out to me I guess ;). I liked the thought of seeing a green colored stuffing inside the paratha and you can also get the healthy brocolli into your system as well. But I wasn't sure if they would taste great. So with some suspicion on that end, I went ahead and made them. To accompany these parathas I cooked some really awesome Paneer Tikka Masala just to be on the safe side, so that it can make up for the bad tasting brocolli paratha if that happend at all :). Looks like i dint need them after all. Brocolli Paratha by itself tasted super good and I am sure I would repeat this dish quite often.

I usually put away making parathas, I think it takes a lot of time, I am not an expert on them and until sometime back, I always had the stuffing oozing out issue while making parathas. This time though, I made really nice broccoli parathas and the stuffing stayed intact. I stayed extremely patient and gentle while rolling out the parathas and made doubly sure that the stuffing was dry and did not contain a lot of moisture. After rolling each paratha well, I would punch my fist into the air as a sign of victory, LOL. And eventually I discovered the trick to make parathas and I shall tell you how! :). So lets move on.

Ingredients

Recipe Source - Monsoon Spice
Serves - makes about 8 parathas
Spice Level - Moderate
Prep Time - 20 minutes
Cook time - 20 minutes

For the stuffing

Broccoli - 1 small sized, grated finely in your food processor
Green chilli - 1, finely chopped
Jeera/Cumin powder - 1/2 Tsp
Coriander powder - 1/2 Tsp
Amchur powder - 1/2 tsp or a tsp of lemon juice
Salt - as per need
Oil - 1 Tbsp

For the dough

Wheat flour - 2 cups
Water - 3/4 cup
Yoghurt - 2 Tbsp
Salt - 1/2 Tsp
Some wheat flour for dusting and rolling
Oil - for making the parathas


How do you do it

1. To prepare the filling, heat oil in a kadai. Add the green chillies and saute for a minute. Add the grated broccoli now and all the spice powders and mix well. Saute  for a couple of minutes until the broccoli release a little moisture. Switch off flame and cool completely. Do not stir fry this filling for long, then the mixture will contain a lot of moisture and the stuffing will ooze out while rolling parathas. Also make sure the filling completely cools before making parathas. Hot stuffing will cause the filling to ooze out of the paratha while rolling.

2. I make my dough in the food processor and this is what I do. The flour, salt, and youghurt is mixed well first. Then I pour in the water and run the processor until a smooth non-sticky dough is formed. You can use your bowl and hand to knead this dough as usual. Mix in the flour, salt and youghurt well. Then slowly add water while you knead to get a smooth surfaced non-sticky dough. Cover this dough with a damp tea towel and rest for 30 minutes.

3. The dough needs to be soft and smooth for soft parathas. So take care to get this right.

4. Remove the damp tea towel, take the dough and knead with hand once again and divide into seven-eight equal sized large balls. For parathas, the size of each dough ball needs to be quite big to accommodate the filling.

5. Dust this dough ball well in flour and using a rolling pin, roll into thick discs of 4 inch diameter.

6. Take 1.5 tsp of the prepared filling and place in center of the rolled disc. Gather the edges of the rolled disc and seal them. When you gather the edges of the rolled disc, the height of these edges must be at-least an inch above the stuffing, this is to make sure the filling will sit well inside. So bring the edges together and make them like a dumpling and seal well.

7. Use your rolling pin, gently roll over the sealed edge to flatten them. Once done, dust that surface with a little flour and roll into 1/2 inch thick parathas.

8. Heat a griddle on high flame. Move to low-medium flame once the griddle is hot. Place the paratha on the griddle now and cook on both sides until dark brown spots appear on them. Each paratha should take about 5 minutes to cook. Apply some ghee or oil on top of the paratha before taking it out of the pan.

Serve this super yummy Broccoli paratha with any side dish of your choice. We had this with Paneer Tikka Masala, watch out for the recipe soon :)

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Egg Kurma | Eggs in coconut milk gravy

Egg curries are such a blessing when you don't have any veggies in your stock and want to make a quick dish. They pair up well with almost everything - rice, roti, dosais, idlis etc. I also make them when I need to escape for the chopping task :). I have always made the chettinadu version of egg curry, you can find it here - Chettinadu Egg Gravy, but this time I decided to make a different style, using coconut milk and it was a super hit. Boiled eggs soaked in spiced and tempered coconut milk are such a delight. We had it along with rotis and it was great. This recipe is definitely a winner for me.

Ingredients

Serves - 2
Spice Level - Moderate
Prep Time - 15 min
Cook time - 15 min

Boiled eggs - 3
Shallots/Sambar onions - 10, peeled and chopped well [If you are feeling especially lazy, go ahead and use 1 large onion instead :) ]
Tomato - 1 medium sized, chopped finely
Green chilli - 2, slit in half along the length
Ginger Garlic paste - 1 tsp
Turmeric powder - 1/4 Tsp
Curry powder - 1/2 Tsp
Cumin powder - 1 Tsp
Pepper powder 1 Tsp
Coriander powder - 1/2 Tsp
1 cup thick coconut milk [ I used canned coconut milk]
Mustard - 1 tsp
Cumin seeds - 1 Tsp
Curry Leaves - 1 sprig
Chopped coriander leaves - 1 Tbsp
Salt - as per taste
Hing/Asafoetida - a generous pinch
Oil - 1 Tbsp

How do you do it

1. Heat oil in a kadai and add hing, mustard, jeera, curry leaves and let them roast. Add the chopped onions and green chillies and ginger-garlic paste saute until they are cooked well.

2. Add the tomato pieces and turmeric and cook until the tomatoes are juicy and soft.

3. Add the curry and coriander powders and give it a mix and saute for a minute.

4. Add the coconut milk and 1 cup water, salt to the kadai now and reduce flame to low. Cook on low flame for 5 minutes and the let the gravy thicken. Add the cumin and pepper powder now and cook for 2 more minutes on low flame.

5. Taste to check seasoning and add more spices if needed. Add the chopped coriander leaves too.

6. Make 3-4 soft slits on the boiled egg and drop them in the curry. Cook for few more minutes. Switch off flame.

7. Pour the gravy on top of the eggs and let them soak in them for some time before serving.

Yummy Egg kurma is done, can be served along with Rice, Rotis or dosais.

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