An Invitation to Indian Cooking - Madhur Jaffrey [78]
Since these patties are cooked like pancakes with very little oil, use only enough to coat the bottom of your skillet or griddle, and heat over medium-low flame. Add a few potato patties and cook them slowly—about 8 to 10 minutes on each side. When one side turns a golden red, carefully work your spatula under it without breaking the hard crust and drop it over on its unfried side. Add another teaspoon of oil, swirling it around. Fry this side for 8 to 10 minutes also, until it has formed a red-brown crust. If the patties brown too quickly, lower the heat.
Note: Since these have to be served hot, and since you may not be able to make many at a time in a skillet, you could use two skillets.
To serve: Place on a heated platter and serve hot. These patties are marvelous for snacks. They are usually served with Tomato Tamarind Chutney, or Fresh Green Chutney with Chinese Parsley and Yogurt.
Or you could serve them as part of any meal. I once cooked a rather pleasant lunch of chicken breasts broiled with just butter, salt, pepper, and lemon. I also made a simple romaine salad and we had these potato patties. It was wonderful!
Plain boiled rice
Plain baked rice
Plain basmati rice
Buttered saffron rice
Basmati rice with spices and saffron
Sweet rice
Sweet rice with carrots and raisins
Sweet rice with carrots and raisins cooked in aromatic broth
Rice with whole spices
Rice with peas
Rice with peas and whole spices
Rice with potatoes and cumin seed
Rice with cauliflower and cumin seed
Rice with spinach
Rice with spinach cooked in aromatic broth
Rice with frozen black-eyed peas
Rice with yellow split peas
Leftover rice with mushrooms
Shrimp pullao
Halibut or cod pullao
Chicken biryani
Pullao (rice with lamb)
Fried onion rings for garnishing
SEE ALSO:
Roast chicken stuffed with spiced rice
Duck—stuffed and roasted
Baked striped bass with yellow rice
he statistics astonish me. They say an average Indian eats one-half to two-thirds of a pound of rice per day whereas the American eats, on an average, about six pounds of rice per year! You may think that the poor Indians eat so much rice because they have nothing better to fill themselves up with. Recently, there was a great shortage of rice in an area of South India, and famine conditions were beginning to prevail. The government offered the people a flour rich with soybean and fish protein as a substitute. The people refused it. They wanted rice. They liked rice. Americans, on the whole, have really not discovered rice. They dismiss rice as a “starch” and as a poor relative of the more popular “starches”—potatoes and pasta. Potatoes can be baked, fried, home-fried, boiled, “duchessed,” varied ad infinitum, and there are so many different kinds of pasta … But rice? What can you do with rice? So even when it is served here, more often than not it is cooked unimaginatively and amateurishly. I have seen Americans eat mushy rice without any complaints. I have watched some of the better cooks using precooked and partially cooked rices in recipes. While most Americans are aware of what good roast beef should taste like, few indeed are even conscious of what good rice is.
Let us start at the very beginning. What kind of rice should you buy? Looking at the varieties available in the average supermarket, I can more easily tell you what not to buy. Don’t buy quick-cooking or “instant” rice. Don’t buy parboiled or partially cooked rice. Neither of them really tastes like rice. Also, don’t buy prepackaged mixes with herbs and spices. There is no “mix” that you cannot manage better on your own. Once you understand and master the different methods of cooking rice, there is no limit to the number of recipes you can invent.
Buy a long-grain uncooked rice. Carolina rice is good and easily available. If you are lucky enough to be near a specialty store carrying Indian rice, buy basmati rice. This rice is grown in the foothills of the Himalayas. It has a narrow, long grain and a very special flavor and smell. The best basmati is