Anitha Jayaraman

I use a Pressure Pan cooker to get it tasty, you can also use an Electric Rice cooker if you want.

• Cut onions into small pieces.
• Grind ginger, garlic & green chillies(optional) to a paste in a mixer.
• Heat some oil in your pressure pan. Add very small quantities of masala items to it – bay leaves, cinnamon, cloves, cardamom, black pepper & fennel seeds.
• Once they are fried, add the onions & then the mixed paste. Fry these until they get rid off the raw smell.
• Add the mixed vegetables of your choice. I use the readily available – cut vegetables – green beans, carrots, peas, corn & sometimes Lima beans.
• You can also cut potatoes and add to it. I skip to get rid of the sweet taste.
• To this add kuzhambu podi(or chilli powder) and salt. Add some water to get boiled. Count this water to be 1 cup.
• To this you can also add garam masala powder / chat masala powder for flavor.
• Once its boiled well, add the right quantity of water minus 1 cup. For e.g. 2 cups of rice requires 4 cups of water but we require only 3 cups.
• Add Basmati rice to the mixture. In my e.g. its 2 cups.
• Optional – add mint leaves or dried methi leaves for flavor.
• Close the pressure pan and cook it to 2 whistles at least.
• Once done, wait for sometime & manually release the pressure from the cooker.

Note – Basmati rice requires lesser water for cooking. To get the rice without sticking to each other, you got to follow the minus 1 cup measure of water. I used cucumber raitha as side dish. You can use onion raitha or whatever.