benazir's blog

Tomato Bath

Actually this is a tomato rice recipe from India. I know probably some Africans that has gone there and compared it to jollof rice. I have to really catch myself because I have been making lots of typos and I have been going over older blog posts to correct the bad grammer on my part. I have even gotten sloppy about the use of punctuation marks and even capital letters. It is because of years of being on the internet and using caps is a form of yelling. Obviously this is an amazing spicy tomato rice dish that I have tried out and made it less spicy for those that can’t tolerate the intensity.

Take 1 cup of either white or brown basmati rice and rinse until the water is clear and no longer milky. Cloudy is another way to describe it and you want to make sure there is no starchy water remaining in the rice. Put it in a coldero and add to mortar and pestle 1 broken pice of cinnamon stick, 4 cloves, 1 bay leaf, 1 black cardamom, 1 green cardamom, 1 pinch each of cumin seeds and black peppercorns. This gets ground in to a coarse powder and added to the rice which is now in the coldero on stovetop. Add 4 cups of water or 1 quart or 1 liter on high heat until it boils. From here reduce heat to low and cover and let cook for 20 minutes.

In a seperate cooking vessel like a wok you have to add 1/4 cup of either corn oil, canola oil, vegetable oil or peanut oil. To this you will have to add 3 drops of either almond oil or sesame oil. Also you can use 3 tbs of butter ghee in its place.

Before you cook the tomato mixture that you would have to use a mini processor. Add 1 tomato, 1 onion or shallot, 1 small piece of ginger, 3 cloves of garlic, either 4 pinches of either unsweetened coconut or desiccated coconut. Pulse until it looks like a raw stew base. Let the oil turn hot in the wok or cast iron skillet and add 1 pinch each of urad ki dal, chana ki dal and mash ki dal and let it turn brown then remove them from the oil and add to the mortar and pestle and grind in to a powder.

Add 1 pinch each of hing, mustard seeds, cumin seeds, 3 curry leaves, the tomato stew base and the ground dal in the mortar and pestle, Add 1 pinch each of pink salt, red chili powder, paprika, turmeric powder. Cook until the raw smell goes away and place this cooked tomato mixture all over the cooked basmati rice in the coldero. It is similar to how you are making briyani. Stir and fold carefully until the rice turns on a red color. Sprinkle with 1 pinch of cilantro and cover for 20 minutes. The stove shold be off at this time when the rice is cooked. This is perfect for eating with achar and yogurt like you do with palau and briyani. Enjoy with lassi and raita also.

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