Rice salad
The introduction
Hello everyone, I hope you are having a good day.
Today I want to tell you about the other day and me preparing another dish, which I don't really know how it is called, however, I call it something like "rice salad", because the main thing here is rice and the other ingredients are just whatever I can find in my fridge or somewhere else, so that you know now, that if you cook rice, you can add anything else to it and it will be just delicious anyways, I guess. Well, at least, it is for me. Rice is tasty with everyhing, if you ask me, and it's like you can prepare it however you want, you can make it sweet or salty or whatever and it will still be great.
So, the other day I decided to prepare some rice, and I had this brown rice bought and I wondered what it tasted like, because I hadn't tried that particular one before, so that I opened it and set aside. I had some vegetables in my fridge and I wanted to use them in any dish, so that I decided that they would go pretty well with the rice and so that I would use them with it and everything would be just great, so I took everything out and started preparing to make that dish. I didn't really know what it would be like when I finished preparing everything , well, I hoped that it all would be tasty when it was finished.
Ingredients
so, now about the ingredients. Of course, the main ingredient was the rice, and then there were some eggplants and carrots and bell peppers and some spices and salt and onions. They were what was in my fridge without any use, and if you have some other things, you may also use them in that salad, I guess. Also, I had these cooked corn pieces, I mean, we have this white corn and we had it cooked the other day, it's just boiling water with corn pieces and just boiling it for a couple of hours, or maybe 2 hours or so, it kind of depends on the corn, I guess, and so that there were some of them left and I thought that maybe I could get those pieces and add them to my rice salad, however, I changed my mind, because I didn't know what it would taste like, I mean, of course, I have seen and eaten salads with corn and many salads have this yellow canned corn in them, however I must say, that I don't really like the taste of that corn and I just don't think that corn in those salads is great. To be honest, this white corn is more delicious, than the yellow one and it would have been more delicious in my salad, than the yellow one, I guess, besides, it was not canned or something and it was new and stuff like that, however, I still thought that it was not a great idea and I just put those corn pieces back into the fridge.
Well, to be honest, I didn't have carrots at home , and I thought that it would be good to add some carrots to the rice salad, because it's always good to have carrots in salads and soups and stuff, and they are kind of cheap, so I went outside to buy some carrots. It's just nearby my house where they have carrots and you can buy them pretty easily without going somewhere far away, and so that I went there and, well, I just wanted a few carrots, I mean, I just wanted 3 or 4 carrots, I guess. Of course, it depended on the size of those carrots, however, when I looked at them, they were small and so that I took 4 of them and while three of them were kind of small, that fourth one I chose to be kind of large. And it all cost me 60 Tetris. Well, now that I think of it, if I had just walked 2 minutes more and go into this large supermarket called Fresco, it would cost me much less, I guess, because in that place where I bought those carrots, they had them in an expensive price, I guess, because 3 small and one large carrots should not have been so much. Well, what can I do now?! At least, it was not much and I could relax a little. Well, o be honest , I wanted to buy some plums, too, because I just love them and I wanted to eat some of them , so that I looked for some plums there and they had them, it said, that they cost 1.70 Laris, so that i bought somewhere around half a kilo of plums and then I started walking towards home. Well, I couldn't really wait and I tasted those plums on my way home, well, it was just a couple of minutes until I got home, however I still tasted those plums on my way.
When I got home, I started preparing those stuff for my salad.
FIrst of all, I took some rice and those vegetables out, of course, and layed them on the table and looked at all of them and they were pretty much awesome and they were plenty, if you want to know the truth and then I thought, whether they would be too much for that salad or not. However, I decided that they wouldn't be too much, in fact, they would just fit together very well, if you asked me.
Ingredients:
- Brown rice, 200 grams
- Carrots, 3 small ones
- Green bell pepper, 3 medium ones
- Eggplants, 3 medium ones
- Onions, 3 medium ones
- Oil
- Salt
- Ground coriander
- Ground black pepper
- Ground yellow flower
- Ground thyme
- Ground red pepper
Preparation process
Well, those were my ingredients, if you want to know the truth. Some people don't use all of them, or they just use whatever they have just like me, or they just use carrots and that's it. Some of them even add some fresh chopped herbs.Well, I had some fresh parsly and coriander, but I decided that it would be too much for my salad and so that I didn't use them in my dish, however, it's really good to use them in dishes, of course, they give the dish kind of different taste, than it usually is. And, well, I still have those fresh herbs left, and , maybe if I want to prepare something else, I will use them, or I still can use them in my rice salad. I have not tasted it yet, if you want to know he truth, well, I tasted it a little, however I haven't eaten it so that I could really get its taste. I will probably eat it some time later, because it's been some time that I prepared it and now it's time that everything got well ith each other and the taste will be better, because it all will be as a whole one and not like separate things like ingredients.
Well, first things first, I took that 200 grams of brown rice. It said that it was an Indian brown rice and , well, it looked kind of nice and I just bought it for that reason, I guess, and, of course, because it was brown rice and not the white one. You know, brown rice is always expensive than the white one, though, so that's why everyone in Georgia buys white rice, I guess. And, perhaps, it's because they are not used to eating brown rice, they are used to eating white rice their whole life and the dishes are prepared with white rice, too, and you can't really read anywhere in any dish recipe that you need brown rice to prepare that dish. However, they say that the brown rice is better and so that I bought it. It was a 1 kilo package packed in a halfway transparent package, so that I could see what was inside of it and that was one of the mainc things of why I choose to buy that brown rice.
So, I washed the rice thoroughly in the water for a couple of times and then I put it into a saucepan and poured some water, so that it was 1:2.5 portion of brown rice and cold water, respectively. And the package said the same thing, too, that I should have that portion of rice and water and that I should let the water boil and then turn the gas on a lower heat and let the rice be cooked for about 25-35 minutes or so, until it absorbs all the water. So, I put the lid on the saucepan and put it on the gas.
In the meantime, I started preparing those vegetables for my salad. First of all, I prepared onions. I peeled them, of course, and washed them and cut them into two halves and placed them in my chopper, where they would get all nicely chopped and stuff like that and I wouldn't have to bother chopping them myself and I would not cry while doing that. You know, that's just the craziest part of handling onions and , I guess, everyone just hates that part, when they chop onions and they make you cry and then you have these eyes all swollen and red and full of tears and stuff like that. So, it's just great to have this chopper-blender and do this stuff in just some seconds and not think about swollen eyes, you know. After chopping them, I put them in saucepan with some oil and put that on a medium gas so that it would cook and then I would add some other vegetables step by step.
Meanwhile, I grated those carrots and the chopped those bell peppers and added them to the onions and let them cook together there. I also sliced those eggplants and cut them into smaller pieces and I realised, that they were kibd of too much for that saucepan at that moment, so that I decided to get the whole onion-carrot-bell pepper mixture out in a bowl and pour some oil in that saucepan and put those eggplants there and cook them for some time, until they got all smaller and stuff and then I would add that mixture to them and the rice would be ready, too, and I would just mix them all together.
Well, soon after a couple of minutes those eggplant pieces became smaller and smaller and they got cooked, so that I could put them into my blender and slightly make them even smaller. And I did that, and they became really nice to mix with the other vegetables. Now it was time to get all those ingredients together in a saucepan. Well, I put all of them togetherand added that cooked rice to the saucepan, too, slowly mixing them together. I also added some spices, because it really needed some, I mean, I had already added some spices to the cooking vegetables, however, when I added the rice, it needed more of those spices and stuff like that, you know. So that the dish would have a perfect taste.
To be honest, this dish should be hot and spicy and I tried to add much of those red peppers and black peppers, too. They were ground, of course. And I had to add plenty of them, if you want to know the truth. You know, my father likes that dish very much, and it turns out, that my mother likes it, too. Well, the thing is, rice is great with everything and whatever you prepare with rice, it’s always good, I guess, and it’s not possible not to like those salads or whatever with rice.
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