thayirsaadham

Hey all,
It is awesome weather in Seattle… at least during the first half of the day. It starts raining at around 7 p.m and it keeps raining for most part of the night. But as long as it doesn’t rain during this weekend, I am happy. I have some friends coming to spend the long weekend and I am soooo going to get kicked if the weather doesn’t behave.

This is a recipe that I tried from Susan’s Fatfree Vegan Kitchen. Her blog is AWESOME. When I saw this event announcement on Vaishali’s blog, I hopped on to Susan’s site and I was amazed at the number of recipes. And the variety of recipes she has! Name any ingredient and she has a bunch of totally different recipes using that ingredient.

So, I was all set to make a pulao one night and I was going through her recipes and this jambalaya caught my eye. I had this block of tofu in my freezer that was screaming at me to use it before it died a slow, miserable death. I feel that a jambalaya is similar to a pulao - we use a lot of vegetables and there is rice involved. The spices alone are different. Instead of the Indian garam masala, jeera, coriander powder, curry powder, etc., the jambalaya uses cayenne pepper, dried thyme, basil, oregano. I followed Susan’s recipe for the spices. The only thing I did not have was the Liquid smoke seasoning and she had mentioned that it was optional. So, yayy! And yeah.. I did not use canned tomatoes. I had fresh tomatoes and I diced them and tossed them in.

You can get the recipe from from here. I really loved this dish. One mistake I made was that I did not squeeze out the water from the tofu properly. So, the tofu was kind of rubbery. Plus I can never make fluffy rice with each grain standing out separately :(. So, the grains were not as separated as they should be. But the dish was yummy and I am happy .

This goes to the event Tried and Tasted started by Zlamushka’s Spicy Kitchen hosted by Vaishali at holycow.

Not a very common combination… I know
According to me, jeera rice goes best with dhal… I had just now blew up the safety valve on my pressure cooker and I was too lazy to cook the dhal in the microwave. Had this craving for jeera rice and also had some spinach in the freezer for quite sometime… so just went ahead and prepared spinach the south indian way.

I saw the recipe for jeera rice on fingerlickingfood and followed it for the most part. I did not use garlic and cardamom. I added green chillies because I am all for spicy food
Also the amount of ingredients might be different.

Jeera rice

Ingredients

1. Basmati Rice - 2 cups (I used ponni rice as I did not have basmati)
2. Jeera - 2 tsp
3. Cinnamon - 1″ stick
4. Cloves - 4
5. Ginger paste - 1 tsp
6. Bay leaf - 1
7. salt - 1 tsp
8. Onion - 1 (finely chopped)
9. green chillies - 2
10. Oil - 2 tsp

Recipe

1. Heat oil in a kadai.
2. Add cinnamon stick, cloves , bay leaf and cumin seeds.
3. When cumin seeds begin to splutter add ginger paste and fry for a minute.
4. Now add green chillies and saute for 30 seconds or so.
5. Add the onions and fry till they turn a light brown.
6. Add rice to this mixture and mix so that the mixture gets coated on the rice.
7. Add salt to taste and mix well.
8. Transfer this to the rice cooker and let it cook.
9. Once cooked, take the rice out of the rice cooker. Separate with a fork and garnish with cilantro (As you can see, I forgot to garnish. Also, I added a little too much cumin seeds. Hence the light brown colour)

keerai

This is a dish that my mother makes very often. Spinach is very rich in iron and I have been suffering from iron deficiency from a young age. So, my mother makes it as often as she can. I love this recipe. It can be eaten with plain rice, chapathi, curd rice, sambar or rasam. I often take this in a bowl and eat it just as it is.

Ingredients

1. chopped spinach - 3 cups
2. grated coconut - 6 tbsp
3. jeera - 2 tbsp
4. ground pepper - 1 tsp
5. mustard seeds - 1 tsp
6. urad dhal - 1 tbsp
7. red chillies - 2
8. salt - to taste
9. oil - 2 tsp
10. asafoetida - a pinch

Recipe

1. Boil the spinach in water till the leaves wilt. Then grind with little water in the blender. (I use microwave to boil the spinach.)
2. Take a pan and add 1 tsp oil to it. Add the red chillies, pepper, jeera and coconut to it and fry for a minute.
3. Grind the above mixture with very little amount of water. (It should be a coarse thick paste)
4. For this step, you can use the pan that you used to fry the coconut mixture. Add the ground spinach to the pan. Add salt and let it cook for 8-10 minutes.
5. Add the ground coconut paste to this and let it cook for 4-5 minutes.
6. For the tadka, take 1 tsp oil in a pan. Add mustard seeds. When they splutter, add urad dhal. When urad dhal turns brown, add asfoetida. Pour this mixture on the spinach.

The keerai I prepared is a variation of keerai molagoottal as found on
Saffron Hut’s page

I did not add any dhal and also, I fried the coconuts along with red chillies, jeera and pepper.

Ingredients

1. Gingelly oil (2 tbsp) - nallennai (in tamizh)
2. Mustard seeds - 1 tsp
3. Urad dhal - 1 tbsp
4. Chana dhal - 2 tbsp
5. Red chillies (2-3) - You can also add green chillies. Make the rice more colorful
6. Curry leaves
7. Turmeric powder (1/2 tbsp)
8. Lemon concentrate (5 tbsp)
9. Salt (to taste)
10. Rice ( 2 cups - cooked)

Recipe

1. Heat the oil in a pan.
2. Splutter mustard seeds, urad dhal.
3. Add chana dhal and fry for 30 seconds.
4. Add the chillies and curry leaves.
5. Add turmeric powder.
6. Fry for 30 seconds and set aside to cool.
7. After the mixture has cooled down, add the lemon concentrate to it and mix well.
8. Add rice and salt and adjust according to taste.

( I added cilantro as I did not have any curry leaves. You can add your choice of vegetables - carrots, peas, etc. Adding cashew nuts , peanuts, etc also gives a different taste to this item)