Arabic Chicken Rice - Customised Version

Recently I’ve got a query from one of my blog readers asking why I’m not giving any recipes for Main dishes like Rices/Rotis/Pathiris e.t.c. It was actually an eye opener for me in fact. A lot of yummy rice recipes passed through my mind in fraction of a second. Amongst those, I prepared the one I love the most, a customized version of Arabian chicken rice/Majboos. I believe the below formula of mine will help you...

 

Ingredients:

Basmati Rice – 2 cups

Chopped Onion – ½ medium sized

Tomato -2 (1 tomato as whole and one tomato chopped)

Cloves – 3-4 no.s

Cinnamon – 2 pieces

Cardamom – 3-4 no.s

Pepper – 10-12 no.s

Green chilli – 2 no.s

Oil – for frying

Chicken with skin – ½ Kg (Preferably 4 Chicken legs without cutting into pieces)

Salt - to taste

Turmeric powder – ½ tea spoon

Saffron essence – 1 teaspoon or Saffron -1 pinch

 

For Frying chicken (optional)

 

Chilli powder – 2 Tb spoon

Turmeric powder – ¼ teaspoon

Curd – 1 Tb spoon

Ginger & garlic paste – ½ teaspoon

Salt – to taste

 

How to:

1.       Wash the rice and soak in water for 30 minutes.

2.       In the rice cooking vessel, add oil. On heating, put chopped tomatoes, onion and sliced green chillies. Sauté for few minutes and mix the spices – cinnamon, cloves and cardamom. Crush pepper with a grinding stone using hand and add to the mixture. Add turmeric powder, salt and saffron/saffron essence and sauté for two minutes.

3.       Put the washed and drained skinned chicken leg pieces into the above mixture and mix well. Pour 3 cups of water and leave it to boil. Put the whole tomato too into the mix. Let the chicken boil for about 15-20 minutes in high flame. Make sure that chicken flesh should not start to get separated from bones.

4.       Take off the chicken pieces and whole tomato from the boiling water and keep it aside. Confirm that remaining water is enough to cook 2 cups of rice (as per the quantity of water you use to cook Basmati rice). Add the washed and drained rice to the boiling water and leave it to get cooked. Switch of the flame once the rice gets properly cooked and water is drained.

5.       The Chicken should be grilled until its skin turns brown. If you would like chicken to be spicier, you can spread the paste made by mixing red chilli powder, turmeric powder, curd, ginger garlic paste and salt before grilling chicken. This chicken can be deep fried in oil too.

6.       While serving, you can garnish the rice with Grilled chicken pieces and boiled full tomato on top along with some fried nuts and raisins.

 

For Tomato gravy:-

 

Ingredients:

Tomato – 3-4 big sized

Garlic – 10-15 cloves

Red chilli powder – 1 teaspoon

Turmeric powder – ¼ teaspoon

Salt – to taste

 

How to:

1.       Cut the tomatoes and put into a mixer jar add 1/2 cup of water and make tomato juice.

2.       Pour the tomato juice into a cooking vessel and add red chilli powder, turmeric powder and salt and leave it to boil for 5 minutes.

Slice the peeled garlic cloves into long pieces an put this into the boiling tomato gravy and boil for another 5 minutes. 

Read more »

Onion Chutney ( ഉള്ളി ചമ്മന്തി )

Teena chechi who is one of the fans of ‘aakrantham’ and my Face book friend, once asked me for my recipe of ഉള്ളി ചമ്മന്തി ( Onion Chutney ) just to know if it’s different from what she used to make.

To be frank, it was something which I’ve never tried but tasted. I remembered that special taste of onion chutney with ‘kallu dosa ( കല്ലു ദോശ )’ which Rekha used to bring to college specially wrapped in ‘vazhayila (വാഴയില) / Plantain Leaf ’. The thoughtof that chutney itself was mouthwatering. Rushed to send her an e-mail requesting for that recipe and within minutes she sent a reply with her method of making ഉള്ളി ചമ്മന്തി ( Onion Chutney ).

I forwarded the same e-mail to Teena chechi  and she made it. My special thanks to Teena chechi for these yummy pictures and to Rekha for the delicious recipe.

Ingredients:
Shallots – big sized- 3-4 no’s
Tomato -2 (cut into small pieces)
Curry leaves – 1 stem
Oil – 3 tea sp
Mustard seeds – 1 tea sp
Chilli powder – (optional) – 1 tea sp

How to:
1.       Grind the peeled shallots.
2.       Add oil in pan and while heated, add the mustard seeds and leave it to spatter. Add tomato** to the pan and sauté until it’s half cooked. Add onion paste to this and then curry leaves.

3.       Add salt and chilli powder if needed and stir till cooked.

** Tomatoes can even be grinded with the onion.

Read more »

Tender Coconut Pudding

As a continuation to the request which I mentioned in my Vanilla Pudding and Pineapple Custard recipe, here is the next dessert recipe and one of the easiest and most delicious puddings.

Ingredients:
Tender coconut – 1 (with coconut water and inside scrapings)
Sugar – 200 g
China grass – 5 g

How to:
1.       Pour tender coconut water into a vessel and add sugar to it and mix well. Boil china grass in a separate vessel with a ¼ cup of water and mix this well to coconut water mixture.
2.       Cut the inside coconut scrapings into longer pieces avoiding all the non-white parts and put these into the above coconut water mixture and pour these to an open glass bowl and keep to cool down.  On cooling down keep the bowl in refrigerator to cool.

If a colorful coconut pudding is needed, before pouring the coconut mixture into the bowl, another layer of color full mix can be added into the bowl. This can be made with Orange/Mango/Carrot or any other mix as per availability. I’m adding an example with carrot here.

For color (optional):
Carrot – 100 g
Milk – ½ ltr
Sugar – 100 g
Vanilla Essence – ½ tea sp

How to:
1.       Peel of carrot skin and cut it into medium pieces and boil in steam either in puttu kudam or in pressure cooker.
2.       Mix the cooked carrot, milk, vanilla essence and sugar in a blender.
3.       Pour this mixture as first layer in the bowl and on top of it add the coconut mixture and keep for cooling.

Read more »

Chicken Noodle Balls

I’ve got an invite from one of my Tamilian friends for Eid (Bakrid) day lunch. But as I’ve already committed to Aneesh that I’ll be at his home for lunch I could not go there. I made it up by going for an evening tea at their home. There were so many delicious snacks made by his wife. Chicken noodle ball was one amongst those, the taste of which still lingers to my tongue. I took the recipe from her and tried it by myself. Here I’m posting for you.

Ingredients:

Boneless chicken – 200g
Noodles – 2 small packets
Ginger garlic paste – 2 teaspoon
Pepper powder – 1 teaspoon
Salt – to taste
Grated cheese – 50 g
Egg white – 3 eggs or Maida - 3 Tb spoon
Bread crumbs – (quantity enough to cover the balls)
Oil – for frying

How to:

1.       Boil chicken with ginger garlic paste, pepper powder and salt in a cup of water until chicken is properly cooked and the taste is fully absorbed by chicken. Mince the chicken pieces to smaller pieces by hand.
2.       Cook the noodles in a separate vessel, but with 2 cups of extra water. Make sure that the noodle does not stick to the bottom of the vessel and cook till all the water contents are evaporated. Mix this Noodle well by pressing it with hand. Make sure that it’s not made to a fine paste.
3.       To the noodle mix in step 2, add the minced chicken as in step 1 and mix both well with hand.
4.       Take small parts of the above mixture in hand and press it. In the centre, put few grains of grated cheese and make it to a ball. Finish off the mixture by making such small balls.
5.       Roll the balls lightly in egg white so that a thin outer layer is made and roll in the bread crumbs so as to cover the roll with it.
(Mix maida with a half cup water to make a thin paste.  This can be used instead of egg white.)
6.       In a non-stick pan, pour enough oil to deep fry the balls.

The fried chicken noodle balls can be served with tomato ketchup or mayonnaise. The cheese at the centre of the ball will be melted on deep frying and will give a delightful taste.

Read more »

Pineapple Custard

As a continuation to the request which I mentioned in my Vanilla Pudding recipe, here I dedicate Pineapple Custard too for my Blog fan.

Ingredients:
Milk – 1 litre
Sugar – 300 g
Custard Powder – 4 Tb spoon
Pineapple – 1
Pineapple Essence – 1 tea spoon

How to:
1.       Peel off the Pineapple skin and cut it into small pieces leaving the central portion. Mix a 100 g of sugar well with this cut pineapple and leave for 30 minutes. Put this pineapple-sugar mixture in a non stick pan and stir slowly in medium flame. Once the pineapple is partially cooked, keep this aside.

2.       Boil milk in a vessel and add the remaining sugar to it. In a separate cup, take ¼ cup of plain water and mix the custard powder well with it. Lower the flame into medium and add this custard powder and pineapple essence into the boiled milk and stir continuously so that the custard powder does not stick on to the bottom of the vessel.  Stir till the mix is thickened. Pour the liquid mixture into a bowl and leave to cool down.

3.       Into an open glass bowl, put a layer of pineapple-sugar mix as made in step 1, keeping a part for the mix for the top layer. On top of this bottom layer, pour the Custard mixture as made in step 2 and keep the bowl in refrigerator (not in freezer). On cooling the custard for one hour, take the bowl out and put the pineapple-sugar mixture on the top of the custard. If needed, the same can be decorated lightly with some nuts.

Read more »