Ingredients
Method
Marinate the vegetables
- Par cook cauliflower and carrots till partially cooked.
- Combine all the ingredients in a medium bowl, cover and let sit for an hour.
Cook the rice
- Soak Basmati rice in 2 cups of water for an hour.
- Bring the remaining 5 cups of water to a rolling boil and add the whole spices and ghee. Add salt (the water must be slightly saltier than you want the rice to be).
- Add the soaked rice+water and boil until the rice is partially cooked. You'll know it's ready when the grains start to curve slightly. (See image in post above).
- Drain over a colander fitted with a muslin cloth. Spread on a large plate and let cool.
Assemble
- Combine milk and orange food color. Ready the fried onions, lemon juice and chopped coriander.
- In a heavy bottomed pan, drizzle some ghee/oil and spread most of the marinated vegetables. If you have par-cooked the heavy vegetables, you can reserve some for a second layer. If you skipped the pre-cooking step, add all vegetables to the bottom layer.
- Top with half the rice, then drizzle some of the orange milk, some fried onions and coriander.
- Then do a second layer of remaining vegetables (if any), remaining rice, more fried onions, orange milk and chopped coriander.
Makeshift 'Dum' process
- Cover the pan with a moist kitchen towel, close with a tight-fitting lid and wrap the towel over the lid.
- Place on high heat for 2-3 minutes
- Reduce heat to medium, and cook for 5 minutes
- Reduce heat further to the lowest setting and cook for 30 minutes.
- Remove from heat, stirring the layers carefully and serve hot with raita and sliced onion rings.