French beans and red capsicum masala rice / French beans and red bell pepper masala rice

While learning and experimenting in my cooking, I’ve realized that food is firstly a visual medium. By that I mean, depending on my mood, the colours and I vibrancy that I like to see and present change. This recipe turned out to be an outcome of one such cooking process. I wanted to make something quick, toss in some vegetables and rice and call it done. I like to use rice as it generally acts as the perfect base for one pot meals. I had some nice French beans lying around and wanted to use them. To make their green colour look more vibrant, I wanted something in red and decided to go with red bell peppers as the second vegetable. The masala rice turned out to be delicious and crunchy due to the veggies and this has become one of my favourite dishes to repeat when I need to cook fast. I have tried making this recipe with basmati rice and brown rice and I preferred the brown rice version.

Recipe Details :
Serves: 2-3 pax
Time: 30 mins
Difficulty: Easy

Ingredients :

• 1 cup Basmati rice
• 1 cup French beans, cut into small pieces
• 1 large red bell pepper, cut in cubes
• 1 medium onion, finely chopped
• 1 tsp garam masala powder
• 1 tsp cumin seed powder
• 1/2 tsp pepper powder
• 5 curry leaves
• 2 bay leaves
• 3 cloves
• 1 cinnamon stick
• 2 tbsp oil
• Salt to taste

• Cook the Basmati rice and keep it aside.
• Heat oil in a pan on a low flame. Add the bay leaves, clove and cinnamon and let them fry for 2 minutes.
• Add the chopped onions with a little bit of salt and sweat them till they are translucent.
• Now add the chopped French beans with garam masala, pepper powder, cumin seed powder and some salt into the pan. Cover the pan with a lid and let the beans cook for around 5 minutes.
• Toss in the chopped red bell peppers and cook them just for around 2 minutes without the lid. They need to be a bit crunchy.
• Finally add the cooked rice to the vegetables and toss the rice around gently in the pan with a ladle. The rice should get perfectly mixed with the spices and vegetables.
• Serve hot with chips or papads.

Tips :

• Sprinkle some water while cooking the beans. Do not cover the pan with a lid for long as the beans might burn.
• Do not overpower the veggies in the dish by adding more of cloves or cinnamon.