Quick-Fix Meals : Burnt Chilli Garlic Rice

After having seen this dish make an appearance on several Indian Chinese restaurant menus, I wanted to see if I could recreate it at home - with one difference. At the IC restaurants, there was always an 'Oriental' (for want of a better word) flavour/taste - I dont know if it was the splash of vinegar+soy sauce or the bits of veggies/chicken (stir-fried with the obligatory MSG). But I wanted to remove traces of Chinoise and create a versatile rice dish - which would marry well both with a 'Chinese' gravy dish as well as an Indian one. With chillies and garlic being common to both cuisines, I thought it could be done.

So off I went.

Washed and drained 1/2 katori/cup of Basmati rice

Finely chopped three semi de-seeded dried red chillies into crimson slivers.

Brusied and chopped 3-4 cloves of garlic into pearly bits of confetti.

In a pressure pan, heated 1.5 tablespoons of oil till very hot. Added the chilli-and-garlic rubble.

Stir-fried it till the garlic was a deep gold and the chilli ribbons had darkened to a red-brown (You dont take the 'burnt' part seriously! :P )

Added the washed rice, gave everything a good stir so that the flavoured oil coated every grain of rice.

Added a katori/cup of water (ideally should be hot, but I forgot!) , adjust the seasoning (I added salt and a sprinkle of chicken seasoning (a blend of dried garlic and other spices, no chooks involved) and put on the pressure pan lid.

Cooked it on medium till 2 whistles, turned down the flame and cooked for a further 2 mins.

Turned off the flame, waited till the pressure dropped, opened the lid and breathed in the warm moist steam that gushed out - redolent with the scent of caramelised garlic.

I'd purposely kept the dish simple, and did not add any additional strong flavouring to the broth in which the rice was cooked - so that it could adapt to any curry it was served with (I made myself a quick Thai green curry and the packed the lot for a delish office lunch) - I think that this rice will go well with Chinese/Thai/Goan/South Indian curries - any 'wet' dish which is spicy-sweet or spicy-tangy or all three.



Some learnings:

1. A little bit of oil goes a long way - 1.5 tbsps is way too much for 1/2 katori rice - my rice turned out (inadvertently) very faithful to the rice served at Indian Chinese restaurants - glistening with oil. Use oil sparingly, just enough to fry the chillies and garlic.



2. Its best to adjust the seasoning in the broth in which the rice is cooked - because the rice grains absorb this liquid while cooking, so the taste and flavour permeates every fluffy grain. I had to adjust the salt at the end (had added a tad less in the broth) - and while it worked out fine, doing it in the broth would have been tastier.

3. Taste the broth before putting on the lid and make it slightly saltier than what you'd think is perfect - since the salt should be enough for the rice which has no salt added to it before.

4. If you don't have a pressure pan, a normal saucepan/kadhai will do, just cover with a lid and cook till the rice is done. This was the way our great-grandmothers cooked rice, anyway. And this method gives a delicious chewy golden-brown crust at the bottom too! :D


Enjoy!