Rice with Lemon and Soya chicken

These days, because of my hubby, most of my dishes are non vegeterian dishes. This is another of a Chicken Rice dish. The best thing that I like about this dish is the fact that even though we do not use Indian spices, the dish tastes amazing and is very easy to make. So, if you are looking for something different to prepare with your chicken today, here you are - 

Ingredients:

1/4 cup lemon juice

1/4 cup soya sauce

1/2 cup water

5-6 dry red chillies - powdered/crushed

250 gm chicken curry cut pieces

olive oil

2 onions chopped vertically

Optional - vegetables to add - carrots, peas

Optional - Cashews

Method

1. Mix together the lemon juice, soya sauce , water and crushed red chillies and keep aside the sauce mixture

2. Heat some oil in a saucepan. Add the chopped onions and saute till golden brown

3. Add vegetables and chicken pieces and saute till tender. Add cashews.

4. Now add the prepared sauce to this mixture and cook on medium flame. Make sure that the sauce does not all evaporate but is thoroughly mixed with the other ingredients.

Serve boiled rice and garnish it with the Lemon and soya chicken.

Note: Adding more red chillies may make the sauce hot but served with rice tastes just enough hot and spicy. The quantity of the red chillies therefore would depend on how hot you want the chicken to be.

Jollof Rice

Jollof rice is a African recipe. I had tasted this once when one of my friend, Olamide, had brought it for lunch and I really liked it. I hope any of you who try it out may also like it.

Please remember that this needs to be a little spicy so that it gives the right taste.

Ingredients

500 gm chicken curry cut pieces

1 cup tomato puree

2 red peppers vertically chopped into pieces

2-3 bay leaves

2 tomatoes finely chopped

2 onions finely chopped

2 cups of rice

4 cups of Chicken stock

Olive oil

Method:

1.       Heat some oil in a cooking pot. After the oil is heated, add the cut onions and sauté till golden brown.

2.       Add the bay leaves, some cashews (if you are interested) and red pepper

3.       Add tomato puree (and hot pepper sauce if required), chopped tomatoes and mix well

4.       Now add the rice to this mixture and mix it so that the colour is even on the rice.

5.       To this now add the chicken stock, chicken pieces and mix

6.       Steam the rice making sure that no steam escapes from the cooking pot. After about 20 minutes, the Jollof rice would be ready.

Alternatives/ Additions

For vegetarian option, you can add vegetable stock and peas, carrot etc instead of chicken.

For non vegetarians, you can also garnish the rice with hard boiled eggs, grilled prawns to give the rice more taste.

Instead of adding chicken to the rice directly when cooking, you can also fry the chicken and add it as a garnishing.

Tips

I did not have chicken/meat stock with me when I was preparing the rice, so I had to improvise with what I had. I boiled the chicken and strained the pieces from the water. Added salt, pepper in this water and used this as the stock. This however is very fatty. If you have enough time, you can prepare the stock in advance and then leave it to cool. Once cooled, remove the fat that is at the top and use the stock.

I also did not have red peppers with me at the time of preparation, so instead I used hot pepper sauce, which made the rice more spicy.

Mangalorian chicken

Ingredients

250 gms curry cut chicken pieces

1 tsp turmeric powder

1 tsp cumin powder

1 tsp corriander powder

1 tsp chilli powder

ginger pieces

1 medium onion chopped

1 medium tomato chopped

1 tblsp curd

grated coconut

oil

chopped corriander
Method
1. Blend turmeric,cumin,corriander,chilli,ginger,coconut,onion and tomato in a mixer

2. Take some oil in pan, add the ground masala in the oil and fry till the masala seems cooked (5 mins approx)

3. Add curd to the masala along with some water to prepare gravy

4. Add the chicken curry cut pieces in the gravy and let the chicken boil in the gravy

5. Remove when the chicken is cooked
Garnish with chopped corriander. Serve hot with chapati or rice