Brown rice paruppu saatham

Dal rice or thuvaram paruppu saatham made with brown rice . Cooking with white rice and red rice of Kerala is always easy for me. Then I tried to make something delicious with brown rice and I am successful many times. Try my Brown rice spinach pongal, Green gram kichdi, and adai to fall in love with brown rice.
While growing up, mom used to make dal separately and mix it with rice and ghee and we would call it as paruppu saatham. But afterwards I learnt from my friend Malar , that  there exists one more version called arisi paruppu saatham, in which rice and dal gets cooked together. This is a one pot meal from Coimbatore. The authentic thuvaram paruppu saatham should be made with white rice and not mushy like mine. I got this recipe from my neighborhood friends and I have tweaked that recipe to fit into our diet days. A few scoops of this rice will be very much satisfying.

Our menu of the day : Brown rice paruppu saatham,baked potato chips and  horse gram chutney.

 

It may look a little watery now, but the brown rice will absorb the water.

Bring everything together to rolling boil in pressure cooker and add salt. Then cook with weight valve on.

Add tomato, chilly and saute till tomato gets mushy.

Saute onion and garlic till they get soft.

Bring rice and dal to a boil.

I used shallots and cherry tomatoes, as I bought them on a sale , but regular ones are just fine.

Ingredients: (serves 4)
To pressure cook:
brown rice - 1 1/2 cup
thoor dal - 3/4 cup
turmeric - 1/4 tsp
hing - tiny piece (1/8 tsp powdered)
salt - to taste
sambar powder - 1 tbsp

To temper:
coconut oil / ghee - 1 tbsp
mustard - 1 tsp
cumin - 1 tsp
curry leaves - few
onion (shallot or red onion) - 1 cup (chopped)
tomato - 3 (I used 20 cherry tomatoes)
green chilly - 3
garlic - 1 (whole)


To garnish:
cilantro (chopped) - few
ghee - 1 tsp

Method:
Wash the brown rice and dal. Soak together for 30 minutes. They totally measure 2 1/4 cups.

Add double the quantity of water + 2 cups. (this ratio is lesser for white rice).  Add 6 1/2 cups water.
Add water to pressure cooker along with rice, dal , sambar powder and start heating. Put turmeric, hing.
In a separate wok, heat oil or ghee. (we can do the entire process in cooker also).
Add mustard , cumin and let it splutter. Then add curry leaves, chopped onion and fry till it gets soft. Then add chopped garlic and saute for 1 minute. Add chopped tomato, green chilly and cook till tomato gets soft.
Pour this to the boiling items in pressure cooker. Add some salt ( 2 tsp) and check if it seems good.
Put the lid , weight valve and cook for 3 whistles. Then reduce heat to minimum and continue cooking for 5 minutes. Switch off.
Open after pressure is relieved, add cilantro and ghee.
Serve hot.

Serving suggestion:
Serve as main course meal with fried appalam, potato chips.
On that day , I prepared horse-gram chutney and baked potato chips as sides. I will post my very own baked potato chips recipe soon.