Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Cheesy Bell Pepper Rice

This is a dish that I adapted from Mansi's blog.Why I say adapted is because I think I made too many adjustments.But the dish tasted divine and we loved it.

Ingredients:
Basmati Rice : 1 cup
Red Bell Pepper:1
Poblano pepper: 1 or 2 green chillies
Onion: 1 small
Shredded yellow cheese : 1/2 cup
Shredded mozzarella cheese/italian cheese blend: 1/4 cup
Garam Masala: 1 tsp or cinnamon+clove+cardamom +bayleaf
Tomato Puree(optional): 1/2 tsp
Cumin seeds/jeera: 1/2 tsp
Turmeric Powder: 1 tbsp
Saffron: few strands
Warm milk: 1 tbsp (for soaking the saffron)
Salt & Pepper: as per taste
Cashew halves: few

Preparation:

Clean and cook rice with turmeric and salt.Soak saffron in warm milk. Roast the cashew halves in a pan with little oil till lightly browned.Keep aside.Chop the bell pepper into small thin strips.Atleast make them look shredded or if possible grate them into short thin strip.I chopped them. Chop onions finely.Deseed the poblano pepper,wash them to reduce the spiciness(optional) and chop them finely.You can substitute the poblano with normal green chillies.

Heat oil in a pan,Add jeera and when it splutters add chopped onion and poblano and saute till transparent.Add all the spices/garam masala powder and pepper and tomato puree and the bell pepper strips.Saute till the peppers are cooked through.Add halve of the roasted cashews,saffron-milk mixture and half of the cooked rice.Mix well and add half of the yellow cheese and then remaining rice.Mix well.Remove from the gas.Top with remaining yellow cheese and mozzarella cheese and remaining cashew halves and coriander leaves.Cover and keep in a warm place till serving time.

On opening you can see an ooey gooey cheese spread across the rich yellow rice.Serve hot with a raitha of your choice.





Now the original recipe here does not have tomato puree or pepper.What happened was I added poblanos and as they are so hot I went for sweeter red bell pepper and tomato puree.I added a bit more tomato puree that specified above and found that the entire mix was sweet.So to balance I added pepper.So its better to stick with green chillies than all this extra work.

Also I used whole spices(cinnamon+cardamom+cloves+bay leaves) than the one used in original recipe.You can also add saffron to water than milk for this dish.I used milk for richness.I also cooked the rice with turnmeric powder than adding it later.

We enjoyed the dish warm as said in the original recipe.Thanks Mansi for sharing the recipe and hope I have not tweaked too much. So this cheesy bell pepper rice Says Cheeeeese to Siri who is hosting MBP: Cheese an event started by Coffee.

4 Comments:

Sum Raj said...

looks elegant and superb...

Cham said...

Delicious looking rice dish :)

anudivya said...

That looks cute, stuffed in bell pepper.

Gopi Shah said...

looking delicious...i like the shape too

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