The Things You Can Do With Cooked Rice: Lemon Tomato Rice

I am a big fan of re-hashing day-old cooked rice and jazzing it up into a simple meal. I actually do it pretty often, this business of giving day-old rice a makeover, except that I never thought of creating a post around it. But after going through Caroline’s delicious post about the versatility of cold rice, I thought I would also post one of my favourite DIY rice-ipes. (Yeah. Once in a while, it is fun to create words that you think are cute, but deep down you know it’s just sad.)

All you need is a cup (or less) of cooked white rice, some spices, a little chopped onion and tomato and you can serve up something that looks pretty without much effort. And you can even put phancy garnishes on it, and give it your own phancy name like ‘fragrant cilantro leaf rice with tomato’ or ‘spiced lemon pilaf’ or anything else you could think of. This works well if you want to host a phancy-ish dinner party for people you don’t particularly fancy. (Such situations can happen. More often than you anticipate.)

Still in the skillet

LEMON TOMATO RICE

INGREDIENTS

• 1 cup cooked white rice
• 1 teaspoon turmeric powder
• 1/2 teaspoon cumin seeds
• 1/2 teaspoon mustard seeds
• 1 green chilli, chopped (optional)
• 1 small to medium-sized tomato, chopped
• 1 small to medium-sized onion, chopped
• Salt to taste
• Coriander leaves for garnish
• 1 tablespoon oil (or less if you wish)
• Juice of 1/2 a small lemon

METHOD

• Heat the oil in a wok. When it get hot, add the mustard seeds and allow them to pop. Then add the cumin seeds.
• Add in the onions and let them soften and become translucent.
• Add the tomatoes and give them a stir.
• Next, add the turmeric and mix so that everything gets evenly coated.
• Add in the cooked rice, and stir well so that the yellow colour from the turmeric coats the grains of rice evenly.
• Add salt to taste.
• Squeeze lime juice and mix well.
• Pull off heat and garnish with coriander.

Hope you are all having a lovely week. I really need to respond to my huge queue of comments. I do not know how some of my friends do it- Anita, Ameena, Caroline, Madhu, Heather…all of you are so prompt and dedicated with your replies!

I know what the reason is though.

I am always looking at other people’s pretty blog pics.

Still not a good enough excuse.

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