Cauliflower Tomato Rice

Its been so hot in Hyderabad the last few days with the day temperatures hovering around 33 degrees centigrade. Hyderabadi winter was supposed to cool, cold even and if not until February, at least until the middle of January. Sure, its ideal weather for my home made ice cream to be gobbled up, but please believe me i was not praying for hot weather just to enjoy my ice cream. And now because i am wondering if the weather Gods are changing the temperatures to suit my cooking, I am going for a spicy hot Cauliflower rice.

I love rice. A good fried once remarked that it was my favourite not just among food items, but my most favourite thing in the world. So much did i love it, that he was considering gifting me a big bag of rice as a birthday gift. No, i ended up with a cake that year, but it wasn't out of consideration if you must know. 

Varalakshmi Vratam - Semiya Payasam, Pulagam

Varalakshmi vratam is considered an auspicious day for married Hindu women. It is observed on the second Friday in the month of Sravan of the Hindu calendar and Goddess Lakshmi (the Goddess of wealth and prosperity) is worshipped on this day. The details on how this festival is celebrated is written very well here, so i won't re-write the whole thing again. I would only like to share with you how i have celebrated it in my home with my mother-in-law, what we cooked and recipes for some of those. It is considered auspicious to offer the Goddess five varieties of cooked delicacies and five varieties of fruits. We made Purnalu (Boorelu), Payasam, Garelu (Vada), Pulihora (Lemon Rice) and Pulagam. And the fruits were bananas, apples, grapes, pomegranates and sweet lime.

My mother-in-law made Purnalu as i am yet to learn the process for it and i cooked the remaining four items. The recipe for lemon rice, i have already posted here. Only this time, there were lots of cashews in it. In this post i will tell you how i made payasam and pulagam. And you need to wait till my next post for the recipe for Garelu.

Simple Tangy Lemon Rice

A few years ago, when i was living in Melbourne, i hardly did any cooking. Most days i would eat both lunch and dinner out. Breakfast was the only thing i would definitely eat at home, not because i was conscious about getting a healthy start to the day, but because i would be hungry within ten minutes of waking up and was too lazy to get to work early enough to eat breakfast out. I was working in the office tower adjoining Melbourne Central with its huge shopping area and numerous food outlets. You could have something new for lunch everyday and never get bored. And i was living within walking distance from my work place. So why would i even think about cooking? There was another senior work colleague P, and we were the only two people from India working in that project in Melbourne. Mr P had never been out of India before that, and had never had to cook for himself, and as a typical old-school type Indian husband - he had always had a woman cook for him. I think he did experiment with cooking in Melbourne, seeing as i was never going to cook or invite him to home-cooked meals. But what i am getting to is that, one day i did invite him (and another senior lady colleague who was there for a fortnight) to dinner on a work day. Not before several hints that they wanted to try out the cooking of this young girl they were working with.