Tomato Rice - a one pot meal!

There’s nothing as comforting as a one-pot meal on busy weekdays or on lazy weekends. Infact if I had it my entirely my way I would have only cooked one-pot meals all the time and be done with my cooking. But sometimes the husband doesn’t prefer that and wants his rice separate, curry and thoran and blah blah all separate…oh! well, thank god he isn’t very choosy and picky about his food, but there are certain things that he’d rather have the traditional way.

When I say one-pot, I mean just that, from start to finish the entire dish is cooked in just one single pan and well if your pan is fancy enough just serve it right out of that ;-)

2 years ago, the beautiful summer of 2013 we had a lovely and flourishing vegetable garden that my wonderful dad grew in our backyard  and we had a bounty full of vegetables for almost an entire year. Tomatoes grew like wild fire and we had so much that we had to infact give away so many bags of tomatoes to our neighbors and friends. We ate the juicy red fruit raw in salads, made pickles, chutneys , masala curries and even froze a whole lot and still we had plenty more.

This Tomato rice was one of the many dishes we made with our organic Tomatoes. And yes, these pics were taken 2 yrs ago when I made this dish with our garden bounty but I still make it exactly like this with any tomato whenever we are in the mood for some tomato rice.

Spicy Tomato Rice

You’ll Need

3 cups Basmati Rice

5 ½ cups water

6-7 large Red Tomatoes, chopped

1 large Red Onion, chopped finely

4 Green Chillies, slit lengthwise

1 Tablespoon Ginger-garlic paste

For tempering

Whole spices – 2 cardamom, 1 cinnamon stick, 4 cloves, 4 black pepper, 1  star anise, 1 bay leaf

2 Tablespoons Oil

2 Tablespoons whole Peanuts

1 tesapoon Cumin Seeds

3 Dry Red chillies

8-10 Curry leaves

Spices used

½  teaspoon Turmeric powder

2 teaspoons Kashmiri Chilli powder / regular Red chilli powder
1  teaspoon Garam Masala powder

A pinch of Hing (Asafoetida powder)

Salt – to taste

2 teaspoons chopped Coriander leaves for garnish 
1 teaspoon chopped Mint leaves for garnish 

Directions:

1. In a large pan, heat oil and add the whole spices, roast until fragrant. Add the peanuts and roast until they turn slightly brown. Then add Cumin seeds, Dry red chillies and curry leaves.

2. Add the Ginger garlic paste and sauté for a minute. Add chopped red onions and green chillies. Add a pinch of salt and sauté until the onions turn soft and pink.

3. Add turmeric powder, red chilli powder, garam masala and hing and mix well. Then add in the chopped tomatoes and cook until tomatoes are soft. Do not over cook.

4. Finally add the Basmati rice, mix it well with the tomato- masala mix and then add water. Cook until the rice is cooked through. Garnish with some fresh coriander and mint leaves on top and serve hot.

This dish is definitely a one-pot meal and it's spicy, tangy and just wonderful. Just serve it with some cucumber raita and pappad and you’re done. Oh! Btw, we had it with chutta pappadam (not fried ones)…I love chutta pappadam, just place the dried pappadam over a flame until it bubbles and curls up a bit. Don’t make it too charred though… :-)

-Manju