Carrot Rice

This being my 300th post, am really happy and excited  to share some pictures from my garden and a recipe with my garden carrots! Thanks for all your support dear friends and readers! :)

I have written about my patio garden in my other(Tamil) blog often, but never wrote anything about it here. I love to grow colorful plants than growing veggies. :) So you will find more flowers than edible things in my small garden!

This spiring we got some dahlia bulbs. The beautiful, bright colored flowers lightened-up our mornings till the summer. Other than that, I have a few rose plants, some geranium plants and a few other small flowering plants.

Mint likes the Orange county weather, and I am getting a nice harvest year around to share it with friends! :)

Got a brinjal plant from the local farmer's market, the plant was doing good in the initial stage, but was affected by insects in between!! Hopefully, I have recovered the plant from the bugs and this is the first brinjal from the garden... :) 

I am happy that I succeeded in growing carrots in a pot..yup!! :))) Planted some carrot seeds in May [1st of May] and they were up for harvest last week.

The carrot seeds I got were not sweet enough to  enjoy the carrots as such, hence I wanted to some exclusive carrot recipe with these fresh carrots. Saw this recipe and it attracted me with fresh ground spice powder. Lets see how to make the delicious carrot rice.

Ingredients
Grated carrots-1/2cup
Cooked rice -1 cup
Chopped onion-3tablespoons
Green chilly-1
Mustard seeds-1/2teaspoon
Urad dal-1teaspoon
Hing/Asafoetida- a generous pinch
Few curry leaves
Salt
Oil

For the spice powder
Roasted peanuts-2teaspoon
Coriander seeds-1/2teaspoon
Cumin seeds-1/2teaspoon
Fennel seeds-1/2teaspoon
Cinnamon stick-a small piece
Clove-1
Red chillies-2
Oil

Method
Roast all the items given under "for the spice powder" in little oil. Let them cool and grind it into powder.
Grate the carrots and keep it ready.

Heat oil in a pan, add mustard seeds and let them pop-up. Then add the urad dal and fry till it turn golden in color. Add the hing, wait for a second, then add in the chopped onions, green chilly. 

Saute till the onions become transparent, then add in the carrot.

Continue cooking for 4-5 minutes on medium heat or until the carrots become soft.  

Now add the spice powder and sauté for a minute. 

Add in the cooked rice, mix everything well.

Add the curry leaves and reduce the heat to low and let the rice blend in with the carrot masala for a few minutes. Delicious carrot rice is ready to serve.

You can have this rice with some chips, curd, raita or with some veggie curries. I had it with brinjal masala.