Comfort Food Series : Methi and Corn Pulao

It seems like ages I was here last. Ages since I posted something which is funny because there is so much to write about. So many travel and food stories. So many recipes to share. So many restaurants to review. The pictures are now gathering dust in my laptop HDD if that is even possible. But the past few months have been absolutely crazy though really I did manage to sneak in a post a little more than a month ago but things have been haywire at the personal front.

N’s granny who is 86 and lives with us suddenly fell very sick about 2 weeks ago, she couldn’t breathe and we had to rush her to emergency. One week in the CCU about 10 days in hospital she is now back home. Still not fully fine but slowly recovering, as much as she can at this age. Old age is tough, you are the person struggling with being dependent on someone and everybody around is usually used to being taken care by you and not vice versa. It’s tough to see them suffering and feel helpless because all doctors tell you for every problem they have is that “It’s the age, We can’t cure her. We just have to make her as comfortable as we can”. We all know it’s the truth but it’s the truth that hurts. The past 2.5 week have been a struggle but now slowly life is coming back to rhythm with granny also settling with a full-time attendant taking care of her and like doctors say we hope to make her as comfortable as we can. And just when we were recovering and adjusted with her illness we had a round of virus doing rounds of the house ending with me catching Dengue.

I can’t tell you how much I dread Dengue, I know total people who have passed away because of it and I know many more who have caught it and told me it’s dreadful. It makes you weak and kills your immunity but I swear inspite of all this I wasn’t prepared for what hit me. Its been a little more than 3 weeks today since I was diagnosed with Dengue and I am still far away from being fine. First came the fever, then the platelets drop and then finally the most dreaded body pain and now it seems on its last leg which is the weakness. I am keeping work to the bare minimum (not even taking orders for Xmas) but still by 6 I can’t even stand. Hopefully this also will be behind soon.

So now that I am at the last leg of it, I am starting to enter the kitchen again slowly. Cooking easy comfort foods that I have been craving for sometime now and this afternoon I made one of my favorite pulaos and was surprised that I haven’t yet put the recipe for it on the blog. I thought it might be a good way to come back in action and break that block I seem to be sitting on currently.

 

Recipe – Methi Corn Pulao 

What I used

• 1.5 cup basamati rice
• 1 cup sweet corn
• 1 cup chopped methi leaves
• 2 medium onions sliced
• 2 bay leaves
• 4-5 cloves
• 1 inch cinnamon
• 1 tsp turmeric powder
• 1/4 tsp ginger powder (I skip this in summers)
• 1 tsp chilli powder
• 1 tsp garam masala or biryani masala (I use whatever I have at hand)
• 2 tsp oil
• Salt to taste

How I made it

• Clean, wash the rice. Soak in fresh water for about 15-20 minutes
• Heat oil in a pressure cooker and add the saboot masalas namely bay leaves, cloves and cinnamon and sautee for 2 minutes
• Add the onions and fry till they start turning brown.
• Add all the dry masalas namely turmeric, dry ginger powder, chilli powder and garam masala. Now add the corn and methi and fry for 2 minutes
• Add 3 cups of warm water to it  along with rice and pressure cook for 1 whistle. I actually shut my heat for basamati as soon as the whistle starts. Let the steam escape on its own and separate grains of rice using a fork
• Serve hot with a raita of choice or even plain curd