Kanika

Turmeric colours the rice and the grains stay separate, so it is not a pudding.

Vegetarian, but not vegan — contains dairy (ghee).

Ingredients

• 400 g fragrant long-grain rice
• 4 tablespoons ghee
• 100 g sugar
• 60 g raisins
• 60 g cashew nuts
• 1/2 teaspoon turmeric
• 2 black cardamom pods
• 4 green cardamom pods
• a 5 cm stick of cinnamon
• 4 cloves
• 1 blade of mace
• 2 bay leaves
• 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg, grated
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 700 ml water

Method

1. TURMERIC COLOURS THE RICE AND THE GRAINS STAY SEPARATE, SO IT IS NOT A PUDDING. Its article calls it an aromatic sweet RICE DISH and its ingredient list has no milk in it at all: fragrant rice, ghee, raisins, cashews, black and green cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, mace, bay leaf, nutmeg, sugar, salt and turmeric. That last one is what makes it look the way it does, and the absence of milk is what separates it from the rice puddings on these pages -- those are grains boiled until they collapse into a thickened liquid; this is rice cooked like a pilaf and sweetened.
2. THE WHOLE SPICES GO INTO THE GHEE FIRST. Black and green cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, mace and bay in the hot ghee for forty seconds, until they smell. The nutmeg is grated in at the end instead -- it goes bitter if it is fried.
3. THE CASHEWS AND RAISINS ARE FRIED AND LIFTED OUT. Cashews until golden, raisins until they swell, both set aside. Left in for the whole cooking the cashews go soft and the raisins dissolve.
4. THE RICE IS COATED IN THE GHEE BEFORE ANY WATER. Two minutes of stirring, so every grain is sealed. This is the step that keeps them separate.
5. THE TURMERIC IS HALF A TEASPOON AND NO MORE. Enough for colour. More and it tastes of itself, which is wrong in a sweet dish.
6. THE SUGAR GOES IN WITH THE WATER, NOT AFTER. Dissolved in it, so it is distributed before the rice swells. Stirred in later you have to stir, and stirring cooked sweet rice breaks the grains.
7. IT IS COOKED COVERED AND NOT STIRRED. Brought to a boil, turned right down, lidded, fifteen minutes, then ten minutes off the heat still covered.
8. THE NUTS AND RAISINS ARE FOLDED BACK IN WITH A FORK. Fork, not spoon, and lightly. Then the nutmeg over the top.
9. ITS ARTICLE PLACES IT AMONG FIFTY-SIX DISHES. One of the cooked items of the Mahaprasada or Chappan Bhoga at the Jagannath Temple, offered at the morning meal.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under India · All recipes