Lemon Rice/Rice Pulihora

Among the many wonderful Indian blogs that I like to follow, is Sailu's blog. Here blog is usally really well illustrated with pictures, clear directions and has a wonderful mix of both authentic Indian and several experimental and innovative recipes for pasta and wholesome kid friendly mean. This particular recipe caught my attention, because of both its use of lemon instead of tamarind and also used delicate broken rice also called rice rawa. There are I guess several variations of pulihora, which I realized essentually translates to sour rice in Telegu, which is spoken in Andhra Pradesh. Well, I did not have rice rawa (broken rice available in the house), but I did have delicate fragrant kalajeera rice available. So I made a pulihora, that was very close to her recipe power packed with a lot of fresh lemon juice that ended up being a lovely refreshing meal for a summer night. Here is how I did it.

Lemon Rice/Pulihora

Prep Time: 5 minutes

Cook Time: 20 minutes

Serves 4 people

Ingredients

1.5 cups of kalajeera rice

1 and 3/4 cup water

1 teaspoon salt

For the tempering

2 tablespoon oil

1/2 teaspoon mustard seeds

1/2 teaspoon cumin seeds

1/8 teaspoon asafetida or hing

1 teaspoon chana dal (yellow split lentils)

1 teaspoon urad dal

10-12 curry leaves

2 teaspoons freshly grated ginger

3/4 cup of dry roasted peanuts

3-4 dried red chilies

1/4 teaspoon turmeric

2 lemons, halved and seeded

2 green chillies, very finely chopped

1/3 cup cilantro leaves

Method of Preparation

1. Cook the rice in the water for about 12 minutes, drain and rinse throughly and set out to cool.

2. Heat the oil and add the mustard seeds, cumin seeds, asafetida and wait till the mustard seeds begin to crackle. Add in the lentils and let them brown for 2 minutes.

3. Add in the curry leaves, ginger and dry roasted peanuts and cook lightly for about 1minutes. Add in the red chilies.

4. Mix in the rice and the turmeric and mix well.

5. Squeeze in the lemon juice and stir in the green chilies and cilantro.

Note: The flavor of this rice improves considerably served after 30 minutes and also tastes good warm rather than very hot.