Milagu Rice

To tell you the truth, variety rices make me angry. They’re depressing, especially if you carry packed lunches every day to school or office. At our home, Lemon rice will most definitely make an appearance every week, mostly Mondays when we’re rushed and unprepared for the work week. Rest of the days I find myself staring at Tamarind rice, Tomato rice or Karuveppillai rice in my lunch box.

Variety rices may be okay on a couple of conditions (3 conditions, but anything more than one we call “a couple”).

1.      Either the side dishes are stellar enough to punch above the weight of the variety rice (what happens when you try to be a food-blogger and work full-time? – you use bullshit phrases in your writing and jot menu notes/ideas during calls)

OR

2.      You’ve got potato chips (or my potato vathals). Anything tastes good with potato chips.

OR

3.      You’ve got some variety in your variety rice.

What I’ve got for you today is Milagu rice - a variety rice that is simple, super quick and tastes great. I love eggs. So I paired the Milagu rice with fried hard-boiled eggs and a mild beetroot poriyal. So there you have it - a little varied variety rice along with a solid side dish - my favourite fried hard-boiled eggs and a mild poriyal to complement the spice and heat. For dessert, I snucked in a few chunks of “Cadbury’s Dairy Milk” into my lunch box. There, much better than lemon rice and potato thokku.

I am linking this milagu rice to my ongoing "lunch box" event. I am sure you have your own lunch box favourites too. Link them to the "Lunch box" event and you could win a pretty dual tone Tupperware lunch box giveaway! 


Prep time: 5 mins

Cooking time: 10 mins

Serves: 4

Ingredients

Rice – 3 cups cooked

Whole black peppercorns – 1 tsp

Black gram/Urad dal – 3 tbsp

Whole dry red chillies – 3-4

Salt to taste

Mustard seeds – ¼ tsp

Curry leaves – 2 stems

Peanuts – 2 tsp (optional)

Oil – 3 tbsp

Ghee – 1 tsp

Method

1.      Fluff up cooked rice and set aside to cool.

2.      Dry roast whole black peppercorns, urad dal and whole dry red chillies on low heat till the urad dal colours. Remove from heat and cool.

3.      Grind the roasted ingredients to a find powder.

4.      Heat a wok and add oil and ghee to it. When hot, add the mustard seeds and let splutter. Then add the curry leaves and peanuts and fry for a couple of minutes. Then add the ground powder and salt and mix well. Switch off.

5.      Add the cooked, cooled rice to the wok and mix gently till the rice is well coated in the spice powder. Serve hot or cool slightly and pack in lunch box.