Vegetable Biryani

Vegetable biryani is a traditional Indian dish made with Basmathi rice - flavors of fresh vegetables and aromatic spices. For us the weekend never gets over without this spicy dish. Biryani can be prepared in lot more varieties and this biryani is my mom's recipe, easy to prepare and delicious to eat. Look out for step by step procedure below.

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Preparation time: 30 min
Cooking time: 30 min
Serving: 2
Category: Lunch
Cuisine: Indian
Author: Vidhya

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Ingredients

To Grind

Green chilli - 4 to 5 (depending on how spicy you want)

Ginger - 1 inch
Garlic - 4 pods
Mint leaves - a handful
Coriander leaves - a handful

To Pressure Cook

Basmathi rice - approx. 200 grms or 3/4 cup

Carrot - 2 chopped lengthwise

Beans - 15 Chop into big pieces

potato - 2 Medium sized, cubed

Onion - 1 chopped lengthwise

Cauliflower - 100 grms (Optional)

Sweet corn - a handful

Spices

Bay leaf - 2

Cinnamon stick - 1 inch

Star anise - 1

Cardamom - 3 nos

Cloves - 4 nos

Turmeric powder - 1/2 table spoon
Salt - 1 1/2 table spoon or as per your taste
Ghee - 2 table spoon

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Method

• Soak basmathi rice in water for about 30 min.
  
• Adding cauliflower is totally optional. If you are adding them, clean the cauliflower florets first. In a cooking vessel, take enough water to submerge the cauliflower, add a table spoon of salt and a generous pinch of turmeric powder in water and allow it to boil. Add cauliflower to the boiling water and cook for 10 min. Strain water from cauliflower and keep it aside.
• Grind ingredients mentioned in To Grind section, add little water while grinding.
  
• Chop Vegetables and keep ready. 
  
  
• In a pressure cooker, add 2 table spoon of ghee, when it becomes hot add bay leaf, cinnamon stick, star anise, cardamom and cloves.
  
  
• Fry until spices become aromatic. Add onions, fry it until slightly brown or becomes transparent. Cook it in medium heat.
  
• Add Ground paste to the pressure cooker. Stir it until you see bubbles.
  
• Now add chopped vegetables and cooked cauliflower.
  
• Give a stir and add turmeric powder.
  
• Now add soaked rice to the content, stir it carefully without breaking the rice.
  
• Add 1 1/2 cup of water. Add salt and give a stir. Taste the water, it should be little salty. Once the rice is cooked the salt will be adjusted.
  
• Close the lid and pressure cook for 15-16 min in medium heat.
• Let the pressure comes down by itself. Leave the lid closed for another 10 - 15 min to retain the flavour.
• Fluff up the rice and serve hot and spicy vegetable biryani with Raitha (Click the like to see how to prepare onion and tomato raitha).
  

Notes:

1. Instead of water you can add coconut milk. Grind the coconut by adding water to it. Squeeze the coconut milk and discard the pulp. Add 1 cup of coconut milk instead of water.
2. You can any add vegetable of your choice. You can add green peas instead of sweet corn.

Vegetable Cutlet

Vegetable cutlet is simpler yet healthier way to hide vegetables inside a yummy patty. Cutlet would be the best snack one can have with no guilt feeling, because it is not deep fried. The method shown below for making cutlet is to just roast them with little/no oil. The cutlet has to be made with potatoes as base for binding all vegetables, if you have diet restrictions you can replace potatoes with sweet potatoes. Even half of the potatoes can be replaced with cauliflower, which is a perfect alternative and adds more taste when it gets roasted. Another best thing about cutlets are, it has no garlic and no onion. This could be the best evening snacks on monsoon days and for family get-to-gather.  This is a very kids friendly snack, you can reduce the number of chillies when you prepare cutlets for kids. I have included both black pepper and chillies, pepper gives nice taste in every bite of your cutlet. With simple steps and photos I had shown how to prepare vegetable cutlet at home.

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preparation Time: 30 mins

Cook Time: 10 min

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Recipe Type: Evening Snacks
Yields: 15 cutlets
Author: Vidhya

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Veg Cutlet

Ingredients

Potato - 6 baby potatoes (I used) or 2 large potatoes

Carrot - 1 Medium sized

Beans - 10 nos

Cauliflower - 5 florets (Optional)

Peas - a handful

Sweet Corn - a handful

Green chilli - 2 nos

Chat Masala - 1/2 table spoon

Garam Masala - 1/2 table spoon

Black Pepper powdered- 1 table spoon

Bread crumbs - 1 cup

Rice flour - 2 table spoon
Salt - 1 table spoon or as per your taste

Method

• Chop carrot and beans finely. Chop potatoes and cauliflower into pieces.
  
• Add half a glass of water to cook vegetables in the pressure cook. Cook chopped vegetable along with peas and corn until 3 whistles, or for 15 min.  
  
• In the mean time, chop green chilli finely and keep aside
• After 3 whistles switch the stove off and allow the pressure to settle down. Drain the water completely from cooked vegetables. Peel the potato skin, add all the vegetable to a vessel to mash them.
• Add green chilli, chat masala, garam masala, pepper and salt to cooked vegetable.
  
• Mash potatoes nicely as it should bind with rest of the vegetables, make it like dough as shown in the picture. You should be able to make small spherical portionsls out of it. If you still want more firm consistency, you can add 2 -3 spoons of bread crumbs to the vegetable mix.
  
• Now prepare bread crumbs. Take two slices of bread, grind it in a mixer and the crumbs are ready.
  
  
  
• Mix 2 table spoon of rice flour in water. (Don't make it watery)
  
• Make small spherical portions out of mashed vegetables, press it down to form patty. Now dip the patty in the rice flour prepared above.
• Now make another coating of bread crumbs to the patty. Follow the same procedures to make all patties.
  
• Put the bread-crumb coated patties on hot tawa/pan. Let it cook for 5 min and turn it over. Cook the other side for another 5 min. (At this point you can sprinkle little oil/shallow fry the cutlets. I made it with no oil and it was absolutely yummy)  
  
• Now cutlet is ready and serve cutlets hot with tomato sauce.