spicytreats18: Vegetable Tahiri

A brief history

Vegetable Tehri is an Awadhi Cuisine, it hails from Uttar Pradesh. It's a very healthy one pot instant rice dish, cooked with seasonal vegetables, and a few aromatic spices.

Most people mistake Awadhi cuisine, for Mughlai cuisine, there is a lot of difference between the two. Mughlai dishes came from Afghanistan, with the Mughal rulers.

The Nawabs of Oudh introduced Awadhi Cuisine to the tastes of Lucknow. It is known for its subtle flavours, uses very few spices and the style of cooking varied from the Mughal where clay ovens were used.

Meats are seared over a high flame to lock in the juices, then cooked over a slow fire for a couple of hours.

In many regions of the sub-continent "Tehri" is mistaken for the Vegetable Biryani. The two kinds of rice dishes are completely different.

I learnt to cook it quite young in an authentic way, It was a regular dish on our menu in college. We were either served for lunch with raita or sometimes it was for dinner. We girls enjoyed tucking into a steaming plateful. Resident students were always found lurking around the kitchen. The friendly mess in charge always had some treat for the girls.

I often make this for lunch, it's so quick and most of all it's a nourishing meal. Simmered over a low flame with seasonal vegetables and a few spices brings out its flavours.

Sharing my version of tehri with step by step pictorial instructions.

Ingredients

2 cups of rice
2 cups seasonal vegetables(carrots, cauliflower, beans, peas, potatoes)
1 large onion finely chopped
1 tomato skinned and finely chopped
1 tsp garlic and ginger paste
Allspice(3 cloves,1 black, cardamom, peppercorns, bay leaf)
1 tsp cumin seeds
Oil to cook
Salt as per taste.

Cooking instruction

In a pan add some oil and heat
Now add cumin seeds, allspice and bay leaf and let it splutter

Now add onions and fry till the colour begins to change, add ginger and garlic paste and fry.

Now add tomatoes and cook

Once the tomatoes are nice and soft and well incorporated with the onion ginger garlic. Then add all the seasonal vegetables

(Missing the carrots, A two-legged someone ate the only carrot I had, )
Fry the vegetables and add turmeric to the pan with whatever dry spices you want to use. I am usually very low on spices.