A New Skill Learned...

I had shared in my earlier post on Sister N’s Mum’s tasty food that she fed AZ and me two weekends ago. Last weekend, I decided to try out two of her dishes  - corn rice and cucumber and carrot achar. Alhamdhulilah, both the dishes turned out well. And that means, I have learnt two more new dishes.

And in the process, I discovered something very useful about cooking with basmati rice (and I am sticking to it). I have been practicing cooking with basmati rice for a while now- ghee rice, vegetable pulao, prawn biryani, etc. I don’t always follow what my Mum adds in, I try to innovate what I get from my favourite food blogs and from my own food sense sometimes. And thankfully, I am blessed with a family that welcomes variations in their food every now and then.

One distinct way Mum cooks basmati rice is that she does not soak her rice. She rinses it thoroughly just before adding it into the mixture base that she has prepared for her briyanis. I, on the other hand, have been soaking rice for at least 20 minutes before cooking it for a while now. For some reason, my rice texture would almost be not quite close to how I want it to be. I tried this time, making the corn rice, without soaking the rice. And it really did turn out with a texture that I always hoped for, or to be precise, with a texture that our family’s taste buds were accustomed to. And so…. I am definitely sticking to this method from now on, In-Shaa-Allah.

Oh, and we enjoyed lunch with chicken masala to complement the two dishes below.

While cooking the corn rice, I realised I had too much corn. And so, I decided to make custard with corn for desserts later in the day. What I did came to look like the bowl below.

And Mum came home, tasted the custard, and did what she does most of the times. She corrected the consistency by simmering the mixture again. Mothers…. May Allah bless them in both this Dunya and Akhirah for the things they do for us every moment. Ameen.