Sundays are generally my-time days. Typically I wake up early on a Sunday, tell the cook the lunch menu, wait till the maid leaves, and laze on the couch all day. Yes. All day long. I read. I watch movies or I sleep. All while I am watching the sun streaming into my living room and telling myself – this is life. Lazing around doing nothing, and not feeling guilty. Yes, the art of doing nothing.
I do this till about noon after which I have lunch, and go back to perfecting the art of doing nothing. At about 6’o clock after we , husband and I , have our chai in the balcony, one of us asks the most important question of the day – What’s for dinner? Now, after having spent the last 15 odd hours in utter laziness, its very tough for me to get my lazy ass into the kitchen and cook. Something or anything. But then, the loves-to-cook-self in me provokes guilt in me by asking when exactly I plan to cook something new if I don’t do it on the one time the cook takes off for the entire week.
At about this point, the time would be 7’o clock, and its too late for me to make anything fancy. You see, the next day being Monday and all, I need to get into the Monday zone by 8’o clock all the while watching the sitcoms I would’ve downloaded. So I quickly get into the cook-mode, go to the pantry area and make a list of all the possible ingredients, which would be next to nothing because of my late decision to cook something and get to cooking, if I find anything at all. Either this or the pizza at this awesome Over the Flame place. One of those.
Today happens to be the cooking day. By noon, I had decided I wanted to make something fancy. I wanted to eat something Jamaican. And since I wanted to be nice to the husband , I decided it would be something to do with rice. I read on some cooking site that kidney beans are an important ingredient in Jamaican rice. Some search resulted in a big box of unopened Kashmiri rajma , which were promptly soaked. Jamaican rice with kidney beans, it was going to be.
So when I had to actually get to cooking, I opened up the laptop and searched for some recipes online which would have kidney beans and rice in them, and got quite some. A mix-mash of all the recipes and cooking methods I read online added to the Indian style of making flavoured rice, I ended up with this beauty.
Oooooh yes. Beauty indeed. With a perfect combination of flavours. Coconut, thyme, some pepper for the hot palate, and caramelized onions and garlic. Perfect. Almost Indian, if we safely ignore the beans, which is why it was a hit with the husband also. I also added a dash of lime juice to the finished rice and lo, the flavours burst in the mouth as I took my first spoonful. And gastrorgasm it was, all the way! :)
Ingredients
Basmati rice – 1 cup, washed and soaked for at least 15 mins
Kashmiri Kidney beans – 1/2 cup, soaked for at least 5 hrs
Onion – 1, sliced fine
Garlic – 8 pods, chopped or crushed
Olive oil – 2 tbsp
Coconut milk – 1/2 cup + 2 tbsps
Dried thyme – 1 tbsp
Crushed pepper – 1 tsp
Salt – To taste
Boiling water – 1.5 cup
Lemon juice, for garnish, per taste
Instructions
Wash the soaked beans well, pour 2 cups of water, 2 tbsps of coconut milk and some salt to taste and pressure cook for at least 30 mins
In a thick bottomed non-stick pan, heat the oil, add the onions and garlic , some thyme , some pepper and roast them all till golden brown.
Add the washed rice and the drained the kidney beans to this, and let them roast in these spices for a bit.
Now, add the boiling water and coconut milk, rest of the thyme, pepper and salt. Close the lid of the pan and let the dish simmer for about 15-20 mins.
You can open the lid and see if the rice is cooked, which is when it is ready to be gobbled up!
