Growing up, every Mom I knew had her own version of making vegetable pulav. Strangely enough, even though majority of the ingredients remained the same, each creation had a unique taste so different from the others. And even after sharing recipes, one could not produce the exact same taste as the other.

Each ingredient in the mix gives this a unique taste, so full of flavor. One different ingredient that I use in this Pulao/Pilaf is cream cheese. We happened to discover this accidentally. When MIL was here, she had suggested adding cream to mellow out strong flavors of chillies, ginger, garlic etc. However, we accidentally got cream cheese instead of cream, but yet boldly proceeded to use cream cheese and the final result was really delicious. Ever since, I have continued using cream cheese in making this Rice dish.

This is a neat dish as it is a one-pot dish and cleanup is a breeze. Just throw any vegetable from the fridge and that gives a unique flavor to the dish (done in the right way, of course)

Vegetable Pulao/Pulav with Cheese

Ingredients:

• 1 1/ cup regular sona masuri rice
• 1 cup of frozen vegetables like peas, corn, beans, carrot
• 1 small onion
• 1 big tomato
• ½ capsicum
• 1 ½ tbsp cream cheese (Use cream if this is not available)
• 1 tsp jeera
• 3-4 pulav leaves
• oil

Grind to paste:

• ¼ cup coconut shredded
• 4 garlic pods
• Ginger
• 4 cloves
• cinnamon
• 3-4 green chillies

• Heat oil in the cooker; add jeera seeds and the pulav leaves.
• Next add onion and sauté for a little while. Continue adding vegetables diced capsicum and frozen vegetables.
• Once they are cooked a little bit, add tomatoes and continue to stir.
• Next add the ground paste and continue to sauté until the raw smell of garlic goes away. Add little more oil if necessary.
• Next add the STAR ingredient, cream cheese and mix until it dissolves.
• Next add the rice, salt to taste, water and close the pressure cooker
• Cook until rice is done.

 This is my entry for JFI-Rice