Peppered Rice: A recipe from Sailu’s Kitchen

There are so many recipes for rice, especially rice flavoured with other ingredients. Carrot Rice. Lemon Rice. Curd Rice. Tamarind Rice. Sesame Rice. Coconut Rice. Green Mango Rice. I see them, and I drool over them and I never actually get to cook them. It is a sad thing, really, as I love rice.

The other night, I saw a recipe for peppered rice and knew (why? No idea) that I needed to cook this right away. And I did. It was easy to make and the aroma! WOW! It is an exquisite dish, flavoured beautifully with the pepper – the flavour is so well balanced, not too hot but hot enough (it is pepper after all). Pepper here is the main ingredient, and the rice is the carrier.  I loved this dish. I got it ready to photograph.

Then the lights went out. A major blackout meant that my house glowed gloriously in candle-light for hours and hours.  It was a beautiful thing, and as I froze without the heating or even an electric blanket in this, the coldest weather for several years, I loved being without lights, TV, radio, computer, telephone, CD player. Luxurious.

I even took a photo of the rice by candle light! The colour might be a bit off, but the taste was not.

Usually I will post a recipe, even if I have cooked it from another blog, because I always tweak it. But this recipe from Saliu’s Kitchen is complete. No tweaking required.  And there is a wonderful discussion of pepper and its properties in the post. So rather than repeat it, the link to the recipe is below.

Take heed of the recipe’s warning. This dish is about the pepper. If you use old, tired, ready-ground pepper that has been sitting on your shelves for years, your dish will suffer. Use only freshly bought, whole black pepper which you grind yourself. It will make this a dish truly from heaven.

Miriyala Annam: Peppered Rice

Source : from Saliu’s Kitchen
Cuisine: Indian
Prep time: 20 mins to cook the rice which can be done beforehand or cooked concurrently with the spices
Cooking time: 10 mins to make the spice mixes
Serves: 4 – 6 people, depending how you use it

The Recipe
Click here for Pepper Flavoured Rice from Saliu’s Kitchen.

We ate it with a quick fresh tomato chutney – half a dozen or so tomatoes, quartered, into a pan with a Tblspn or two of water, 1 or 2 apples diced, about an inch of ginger chopped, salt (no pepper if eating with Peppered Rice), a little sugar if the tomatoes are tart, about 1 tspn of good red wine vinegar and a drizzle of pomegranate syrup. Cook until the tomatoes are collapsed and the apples have lost their crunch. Yum.

And with some quince mash that I made in Autumn – quinces cooked overnight in a very slow oven with a sugar syrup and a spice mix including star anise and black pepper. Then mashed with a tiny bit of vinegar, and some salt and pepper. A delish ruby red chutney that keeps for ages.

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