Black Pepper Rice

From ‘The New Tastes of India’, Das Sreedharan, Headline, 2001.

Whenever I cook rice I usually use the rice cooker so for this particular recipe I changed instructions somewhat to make it work in the cooker.

Firstly I fried a chopped onion until it had browned. I placed the onion in the rice cooker. Now in the same frying pan I cooked a halved green chilli, half a dozen curry leaves, a half teaspoon of mustard seeds and of cumin seeds, and a half teaspoon of black peppercorns which was a little bit more than the recipe called for. After the mustard seeds began to crackle I added the contents of the pan to the cooker.

Two hundred grams of jasmine rice was now washed several times until the water ran clear. This was added to the cooker with half a teaspoon of salt. Water was added and the cooker turned on to cook.

This was a good change from the usual plain cooked rice. The spicy flavours had fused into the rice and gave it a lift.

Taste: ✔✔✔

Ease of cooking: ✔✔✔✔