INGREDIENTS

INSTRUCTIONS

Yesterday evening, with a friend coming over for dinner, I broke out Madhur
Jaffrey's "Indian Cooking" and whipped up a dinnerful of subcontinental
dishes, which I thought I'd share with the list. All three recipes derive
from that one book, which I can't recommend highly enough as a good
overview of all the various aspects of Indian food. None of these dishes
are outrageously (even notably) hot, but could be jacked up however you
like. Anyway, here's what we had last night:
Prep time: 3 hours with saffron milk; about 1.5 hours otherwise
Cooking time: about 45 minutes
Heat a small, heavy frying pan or saucepan over medium heat till very hot.
Add saffron threads and toast 1-2 minutes, until the threads have darkened.
Remove threads from pan and crumble into milk. Set aside and refrigerate up
to 3 hours.
Wash the rice in several changes of water and drain. Soak for 30 minutes in
1 pint of water and drain for another 20 minutes.
Preheat oven to 300 degrees.
In a large frying pan, melt the butter or ghee over medium heat. Add the
cardamom seeds and cinnamon and stir about for 1 minute. Add the rice and
saute, turning heat down if necessary, 3 minutes. At this point add 1 pint
water and the yellow food coloring. Stir, cooking at medium heat, until the
rice has absorbed the liquid. Transfer rice to a covered ovenproof dish and
add the saffron milk, almonds, raisins and sugar. Mix well, then bake in
300-degree oven for 30 minutes. (I just put it in the same oven as the
chicken at 350 for about 5 fewer minutes- worked fine.) Remove the whole
spices from the rice before serving.
NOTE: If you don't have saffron threads or are on a budget, eliminate the
saffron and the milk, and simply increase the yellow food coloring to 1
tsp.)
Posted to CHILE-HEADS DIGEST by "Jonathan T. Smillie" <jsmillie@protix.com>
on Oct 19, 1998, converted by MM_Buster v2.0l.

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