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.

Mutter potato pulav

Ingredients
100 gms peas
1 medium potato cut in small thin pieces
Some cashews, raisins
Cardamom, Cloves, Pepper, Jeera
1 small onion slitted vertically in long slices
green chilli slit vertically
Rice
1 tsp jeera and dhania powder
salt to taste

Method
1. Take oil in cooker. Add some jeera in it. Once jeera starts to sputter, add onion to this
2. When onion starts turning golden brown, add chilli, caramom, cloves, pepper
3. Fry the above for some time
4. Add jeera and dhania powder and mix them well while frying
5. Add cashews and raisins
6. Add mutter and potato and rice in the cooker. Mix all together.
7. Add salt to taste
8. Add water in proper quantiy (double the rice) and close the cooker
9. Pressure cook for two whistles

Garnishing:
Add chopped corriander and grated coconut for garnishing the pulav