Lemon rice
"Lemon rice" as popularly called these days is English translation for the Traditional Tamil food, "Elumichai sadham".
"Elumichai" means "Lemon" and "Sadham" means "steamed rice".
Lemon rice is one of the four traditional "Kattu Soru" of Tamils during travel. The other 3 are Tamarind rice, Coconut rice and Curd rice.
Lemon rice is quite easy to make. Let us look at the recipe here.
Ingredients
to make Lemon rice
- Lemon - 4 nos
- Steamed rice - 2 cups
- Sesame Oil - 8 table spoon
- Mustard seeds - 1/2 table spoon
- Chana dal - 1 table spoon
- Urad dal - 1/2 table spoon
- Asafoetida - 1/4 table spoon
- Turmeric - 1/4 table spoon
- Ginger - 1 inch long piece
- Green chilli - 4 nos
- Curry leaves - a string
- Coriander leaves - 2 string
Preparation
1
Prepare 2 cups of steamed rice.
Transfer it to a large bowl and add 4 tea spoon of gingely oil (also called sesame oil or nalla ennai) to it.
Mix carefully.
See to that the rice doesnt break while mixing.
2
Clean, peel and finely chop the ginger.
Finely chop the green chillies.
Squeeze the juice out of 4 lemons and keep them aside.
3
Making the lemon juice mixture to mix with the steamed rice:
Heat 4 tsp of gingely oil in a small pan.
Once the oil is hot, add mustard seeds.
When it splatters, add channa dal (kadalai paruppu).
When it turn light golden color, add urad dal (black gram).
When it turn golden brown, add peeled and finely chopped ginger, chopped green chillies, curry leaves, asafoetida powder, fry for 2 min.
Then add turmeric powder, salt and lemon juice made in step 2.
Mix them all together and then turn off the flame.
4
Add the lemon juice mixture (made in Step 3) to the rice and mix throughly.
Taste the rice. Depending on the taste, add extra salt or lemon juice if needed and mix well again. Garnishing with coriander leaves is optional.
5
Serve warm. Lemon rice can be eaten as such or with a side dish, preferrably a spicy side dish.
