Pink Pulao/Pilaf - Tomato Rice

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This recipe is my mother-specific. I do not know anyone else who cooks it like she does! Except now for me. I have been calling it Pink Pulao since childhood, simply because of its beautiful pale pink color. And now my whole family calls it so!

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Childhood story

There is a short memorable story attached to it. When I was very young, my mother dropped me at one of my aunt's home as she was going out for shopping. My aunt asked my preference for lunch. I requested her to cook pink pulao. She had obviously heard the name for the first time and did not know the recipe! She asked me what all went into it. I told her that it was pink in color and had rice and potatoes in it. This was all that I could recognize in the pulao at that little age! For the rest of the ingredients, she had to depend solely on her imagination. For the pink color, she added red chilly flakes. It did not help much. I asked her to make it more pink. And so she added more chilly! It now looked more pink but did not taste like it should have been. I asked my aunt again, 'Its chilly! And it doesn't taste like it should, please make it like mamma does'! I was hoping that she would be able to make it with the ingredients that I had told her. But I did not know how difficult it would be for her to actually cook something that she had never done before based on pure guesswork!! Tired and confused but still wanting to make it good enough for me, she went into the kitchen for the third time. Luckily, my mother arrived just then! My aunt asked her immediately 'How on earth do you make a pulao pink?' and she narrated the whole 'make it like mamma does' story. 'Oh its the tomatoes!!' told my mother. My aunt just sighed!

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Ingredients (Serves 2) :

• 1 cup(milk mug in this case) white and long grain rice - Basmati preferably.
• 1 big potato - chopped in chunks.
• 1 and half vine tomatoes OR 2 roma tomatoes - chopped in chunks.
• 1/2 an onion - chopped in chunks.
• 2 green chilies - finely chopped.
• Fresh coriander leaves - for garnishing.
• Any other chopped vegetables as preferred - Mushrooms, Cauliflower, Peas.
• 4 cardamoms - grounded.
• 4 whole cloves - not grounded.
• 2 medium sized bay leaves.
• 1 teaspoon whole fenugreek seeds.
• 2-3 tablespoon cooking oil.
• Salt to taste.

Steps:

1. Wash rice thoroughly and keep it aside soaked in water. Soak it only when you are ready to start cooking and not before that.
2. Heat cooking oil in a pressure cooker on a medium flame.
3. When the oil has heated, put fenugreek seeds and bay leaves into it. Wait for them to turn light brown.
4. Add grounded cardamom and cloves to it. Wait for the cloves to bloat or pop.
5. Add onions. Saute them until they turn transparent. Do not saute them as much as they are sauted for curries. They should be stiff while turning transparent.
6. Add chopped chillies and saute them for a few seconds.
7. Add tomatoes now. Saute until they are little bit tender but not as much tender as for curries.
8. Now add potatoes.
9. Remove rice from the water they were soaked in. Either keep the water for cooking or throw it away. Add rice to the cooker.
10. Pour water 1 & 1/2 times the amount of rice into the cooker. So if the quantity of rice was 1 cup, quantity of water should be 1 and 1/2 cups. Either reuse the water used for soaking or use new.
11. Add salt to taste.
12. Stir the mixture and cover the pressure cooker. Bring to pressure over high heat. Heat till one whistle in traditional stainless steel pressure cookers OR for 5 minutes using the PIP method.
13. Let the pressure come down naturally.
14. Garnish with coriander and serve it hot with curd, pickles or butter.

Enjoy!

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