Lemon Rice and Idli

We've mentioned our love of South Indian food on a number of occasions. For tonight's dinner we turned to an excellent cookbook we haven't had out in a while: Dakshin - Vegetarian Cuisine From South India by Chandra Padmanabhan. Some of the recipes in here are a little involved and/or require ingredients that are hard to find (at least around here), but we've also found many good ones that aren't that difficult to make. Like this Lemon Rice. Start by cooking a cup of basmati rice (brown rice would probably be good too). Then heat some oil in a pan and add a teaspoon each of black mustard seeds and cumin seeds along with a pinch of asafoetida powder and a few chopped curry leaves (you can also add a couple teaspoons of dal here for some extra texture). Then add a handful of unsalted peanuts and about a tablespoon of finely minced ginger (and some minced chiles if you want it spicy). Cook for a couple minutes then add the cooked rice and 1/4 tsp. turmeric. Mix well then remove from heat and add the juice of 2 lemons. Garnish with chopped cilantro.

On the side we had the Kancheepuram Idli from the same book. I hadn't tried this recipe before and I did it a little differently, but it came out pretty good. Idlis start with soaking rice and urad dal in water for a couple of hours, then draining the water and blending the rice and dal into a batter in a food processor. Then the mixture sits out and ferments for up to 24 hours. Typically idlis are steamed in special little molds (we have one that goes in the microwave), but with this recipe, some more seasonings are added and it's cooked in a shallow cake pan in a pressure cooker. Since we don't have a pressure cooker, I baked it in a small casserole dish. It was good with some prepared mango chutney on top.