Cilantro Lemon Rice

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Hope our friends in U.S enjoyed the long weekend. I did. We visited friends and even hit the malls to check the Memorial Day sale. By the crowd in the malls, I could see most people were making good use of the discount sales. I did not find anything I wanted so came back empty handed but had fun nevertheless being out and about.

I made some cilantro rice on Friday and had it with chicken curry. I always enjoy the Chipotle burrito, especially the rice they pack in it. To have a change from the usual white rice, I decided to try my hand at cilantro rice and what do you know, it was pretty good! When you have guests over and have too many things to cook, this rice will make be easy enough to put together, and yet keep the festivity alive because this rice has the zing of lemon and a burst of cilantro flavor.

I have seen recipes which calls for lemon zest and I say go ahead and do that if you like. I have not used it in the recipe below but I can see it will be fun to add some lemon zest to add more punch. You can play with the amount of lemon juice to make it suite your palette. Lemon and cilantro cannot go wrong in the coming summer months. Don't you agree?

The possibility of mixing this rice in your salads and wraps is endless. It's also great with chicken or any other curry.


Ingredients:
Basmati Rice – 2 C
Tejpatta/Indian Bay Leaf – 1
Salt – to taste
Lemon juice – 2 Tbspn
Soya sauce - 1 Tbspn (optional)
Cilantro - 1/2 C
Canola Oil - 1 Tbspn

Method:
1. Wash and soak rice for about ½ hour
2. Bring about 10 cups of water to a boil. Strain the water from the soaked rice and slip it into the boiling water along with bay leaves, and enough salt. Taste the water to make sure there is enough salt. Cook the rice al dente.
3.Chop the cilantro fine and mix it with lemon juice, soya sauce, and oil in a serving bowl which will hold all the cooked rice. Add a couple of spoons of rice and mix with the cilantro-lemon mix. Add the remaining rice on top and using a fork fluff the rice until well mixed with cilantro and lemon.

Notes:

1. If the cooked rice is not salted well enough, add more along with the lemon juice - preferably, dissolved in the lemon juice to have it evenly mix in the rice.
2. If you like the rice to be white in color avoid the soya sauce and replace it with lemon juice.

Beef Cutlets

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This is a recipe that Sunitha had mentioned in her chicken cutlet post about a month ago. Which means today’s recipe has been in the drafts for quite a long time. I haven’t been cooking anything time consuming of late mainly because of laziness. But I continue to blame the weather for my lethargy !

Meat cutlets are a hot selling snack in Kerala bakeries. We have a couple of bakeries, near my parents ‘ home, where they sell the most delicious cutlets. Some days, the demand was so high the bakeries would run out of cutlets way before tea time, which is when we would have stopped by to buy some. Oh! the disappointment!
Another place and time from when cutlets got registered in my mind as a fantastic food was the hostel. Especially the one I stayed in while doing my pre-degree course. This hostel is in fact one of the best hostels where I stayed which served good food. I can say this with certainty because I have stayed in quite a few hostels during my college days. And beef cutlets in this place served was tremendous. Hm… I can almost taste it, writing about it.

Thursday lunch is when they served cutlets and Thursdays were always when the hostelites felt the hunger pangs the most. Well, hunger and a dying desire to eat the marvelous cutlets, of course. The hostel is about 5 minutes from the college campus but on Thursdays we would reach it in a minute. One cutlet per person, a dry dish with moru kachiyathu was the menu. Now, you will agree one cutlet for a person is never enough. For the first year, most of us savored every bite of this one piece we were doled out and remained sated. But the second year, we were bolder and demanding. With more friends, gangs had been formed and the human pack behavior was at it’s best. Some of us meat eaters had vegetarian friends and we plotted a plan. On Thursdays, we managed to get these poor souls to lunch at our table. I remember one girl a vegetarian by choice who sometimes enjoyed chicken but otherwise remained a vegetarian. We connived and pleaded with her to lunch at our table. She was a sweet heart and foregoing her special vegetarian food agreed to lunch with us. The lady who serve us, unaware of our antics would serve everyone at our table a cutlet each and as (The vegetarians and non vegetarians are encouraged to sit at their preferred place so that food can be served accordingly on each table). The unsuspecting served would serve this vegetarian friend a cutlet and the rest of us would hide our smile and wait for her to move on. As soon as the server was out of sight we would grab the cutlet from our friend’s plate. The ensuing fight for this one lone beef cutlet is too gory to let you in on the details. We never persuaded this friend to taste the cutlets ever , fearing she might turn over and be a fan herself. We were wicked!

But I have to tell you, the time in college and the hostels were the best times. I am still in touch with friends from that time but have lost contact with the sweet friend who let us rob her of the beef cutlet. I wonder how she is fairing without cutlets but as for me and most of my other friends we all still love cutlets! Whenever I make beef cutlets memories pour in from those days. Oh jeez! I am all nostalgic now, and I want some beef cutlets !




Ingredients:


Onions finely chopped- 1/2 cup
Ginger grated- 3 Tbsp
Garlic grated- 1 Tbsp
Garam masala- 2 tsp
Green chilies finely chopped- 4-5
Black pepper powder- 1/4 tsp
Curry leaves, chopped- 5-6leaves
Ground Beef- 1 lb
Boiled potatoes- 2
Oil- 2 Tbsp + for deep frying
Bread crumbs from 2-3 slices
Slightly beaten egg- 1

Method:

1.Heat 2 tbsp oil in a wide frying pan. Saute the onions till translucent.
2.Add the chopped green chillies, ginger and garlic and saute for a few minutes.
3.Also add the garam masala and chopped curry leaves and saute.
4.Add the ground beef and mix everything well. Add a little bit (maybe 1/4 cup) water, cover and cook till the meat is done and all the water is absorbed.
5.Mash the boiled potatoes and mix with the beef mixture.
6.Heat the oil for frying the cutlets. When it is almost ready start shaping the cutlets.
7.Make small lemon size balls out of the mixture and press between the palms and make your preferred shapes, like oval, round,heart etc.
8.Dip them in the egg and roll in the bread crumbs and deep fry till both the sides are brown.
9.Serve warm with ketchup.

Notes:

1. You could use any meat of your choice.
2.If you don't have curry leaves, add some chopped coriander leaves instead.
3.Do not keep the shaped cutlets after dipping in egg for a long time. Fry them as soon as you can.
4.If you want to shape them and store for frying after a while, do not dip them in egg or roll in crumbs, do this step just before you fry them in oil.
5.The amount and flavor of ginger gives it the authentic taste. If you are using great quality ginger, use lesser than I mentioned in the recipe.(I never get ginger that has a flavor anywhere close to the ones we get in Kerala :(

I am sending these cutlets to this month's Kerala Kitchen hosted at Spoonful of Delight

Contributor: Namitha

Lettuce Wrap

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Everybody needs finger food these days. Maybe it is because it allows tasting a variety without over indulging. Small bites of different taste. I get the feeling the future generations will only be eating finger foods. Which will make sense with so many people doing desk jobs and portion control of our meals are being a requiste to keep a healthy lifestyle. Have you heard of 5 course dinners recently. No, right? Exactly my point, it's the age of finger foods. So keeping with the trend, here is something easy, fun and colorful for your next party.

You can wrap the lettuce in a host of ways. Cut each leaf into four, take the mid rib out and make cones of each part, hold it together with tooth picks and fill with your choice of meat or vegetables.

If you are just having it with your family then thin the mid rib of the leaf and wrap meat or vegetables in each romaine lettuce leaf.

Ingredients for the filling:

Chicken breast - 1 lb
Soya bean sauce - 3 Tbspn
Thail chilli - 1
Ginger - 1/4 tspn chopped or grated fine
Garlic - 2 cloves chopped fine
Sesame seeds - 1 tspn
Oil - 2 tbspn

Wrap
Romaine Lettuce - 6 leaves

Optional:
Onion - to taste
Tomato - 1/2

Method:

1. Chop the chicken breast into small pieces. Marinate with 2 tbspn of soya sauce and refrigerate overnight or at least marinate for 2 hours
2. After chicken has marinated it's ready to stir fry.
3. Heat oil in a pan, add ginger, garlic and green chilies - saute till the raw smell turns to aromatic.
4. Add the marinated chicken with juices and stir fry on high for 8 to 10 minutes or until cooked through
5. Sprinkle with sesame seeds and stir again. Alternately, toast the sesame seed and add to the cooked chicken and toss
6. Add the remaining 1 tbspn of soya sauce to the chicken towards the end of the cooking. Some soya sauce comes with a lot of salt therefore make sure you test for salt and taste before adding the last spoon of soya sauce.
7. Once the meat has cooled wrap it in a whole lettuce leaf. Or else, cut each leaf into four, make a cone shape of it and fill the chicken and hold the leaf together using tooth pick.

You can use a soya vingear dip or peanut sauce.

Contributor: Sunitha