Cabbage Brown Rice

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My father who is something of a mathematics whiz and the "go to person" for all of us when we have any questions on anything related to maths, first introduced me to Sudoku. For those of you unfamiliar with sudoku, it is a logic based number placement puzzle. The objective is to fill a 9x9 grid with the numbers 1 to 9 such that each column, each row and each of the nine 3x3 boxes contain the numbers 1 to 9 only one time each.

This incredibly simple sounding puzzle can be highly addictive and can be quite difficult to abandon when you are in the middle of one. It is also quite a lot of fun to do and a great way to pass time on long flights. When I start one of these puzzles, I find myself keeping that page open and keep coming back to it and inserting a couple of numbers in the right slots before going on to do the next thing on my "to do " list. A lot of you may already be "into" sudoku puzzles but if you have never tried them and love to exercise your brain,you should try these out....In either case you can check out my links page here , I have added these puzzles to that page so you can try your hand at these puzzles if you feel like it :-)

Coming back to this cabbage rice that I made using brown rice, I got the idea for this in a Tarla Dalal vegetarian cookbook. It was described as a Maharashtrian style rice and seemed like something we would like. So I adapted that recipe and made some changes to make it healthier, increased the quantity of vegetables to make it hearty enough to serve as a one pot meal and loved the end result.

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Ingredients and Method to make Cabbage Brown Rice

2 cups shredded cabbage

1 cup frozen or fresh green peas

1 small to medium onion cut fine

1 1/4 cup brown basmati rice

4 tsp coconut oil (or any other oil)

1 clove

2 whole cardamoms

1/2 stick cinnamon

4 small bay leaves

1/4 tsp turmeric powder

1 tsp garam masala (or according to taste)

2 1/2 cups hot water + 1 cup hot water (additional 1 cup only if required )

salt to taste

1/4 cup grated fresh or frozen coconut

Place basmati rice in a large bowl, fill with fresh water until the rice is covered, swirl the rice once or twice and drain water and keep rice aside.

In a large heavy bottomed pan heat oil, add onions and saute until the onions are transparent, then add clove, cardamoms, cinnamon and bay leaves. Stir these spices a few times.

Add shredded cabbage, green peas, turmeric powder, garam masala, brown rice and 2 1/2 cups hot water and bring the mixture to a boil, reduce heat, cover and cook.

Stir this occasionally and check to see if more water is required, add balance of water (about 1 cup) only as required until the rice gets cooked but is not mushy.

Add salt to taste, mix well.

Lastly add grated coconut, mix well and serve hot with curry or raita or chips as preferred.

Serves approximately 2 to 3

Notes

You can make this with white basmati as well, just proceed as with brown basmati, only reduce the bay leaves to 2 and also adjust garam masala as per taste.

With this level of spices this rice was very mild and not too spicy, if you like spicier rice, you could add red chilli powder according to taste to spice it up a bit.

Suggested variation

Sprinkle juice of half a lemon on this quantity of rice just before serving for a slight tartness.