Exotic Food from an Exotic Land: Mama Raj's Rajma

Here is the debut of my Mama Raj. She’s an awesome cook and I learned a lot about making great food from her. I can’t say I always appreciated her pressure to make me roll out perfectly round rotis (Indian wheat tortillas) or her attention to detail in every aspect of the meal preparation. However, years later I can look back and appreciate her efforts in helping me become a good Indian house wife (not!). Today’s dish is just as yummy as it looks…Rajma (curried red kidney beans ) has a robust flavor and the beans seem to melt in your mouth. How can a bean melt in your mouth…I don’t know how, but these totally do (excuse me as I wipe drool off my keyboard…ya, it’s that good!) Once you try it, you’ll eat it everyday! Believe me, given a chance, my brother will eat Rajma for breakfast, lunch and dinner if we let him! It’s like a bowl of divine ecstasy for him…he’ll go on and on about it so this is why I’m not asking him to write this blog!

The wonderful thing about this dish is that red kidney beans are very high in iron, folate, protein and anti-oxidants…so you can’t go wrong eating this for every meal (if you chose to) So here is my mom. She's hardly ever used a computer let alone written a blog... (enter mom)

1 cup Red Kidney beans, dry or 1 can cooked 1 medium onion, diced 3 garlic cloves, crushed 1 large tomato, diced Seasonings: salt, cayenne pepper, and garam masala to taste I soaked one cup of red kidney beans in four cups of water over night and pressure cooked it for 20 minutes. As the beans were cooking, I sautéed the onions and garlic in a little bit of canola oil. Once the onions are browned, add the seasonings and diced tomato in it and sauté it for 5 more minutes. Then add 1/4 cups of water and cook for 5 more minutes until it becomes a thick sauce. Mix this sauce with the cooked red kidney beans and add one tea spoon of garam masala and salt to taste. You can add a touch of cayenne pepper to lift up the taste of the dish but Sangeeta loves it mild. So enjoy. Easy……..Rajma goes very good with any kind of rice. This time I made rice pullouve. I heat one tea spoon of olive oil in a large pot and add one teaspoon of cumin seeds and 10 black peppercorns. Let it splitter in the pot (5 seconds is enough to let the seeds pop) and then add rice. Mix it up and add 1 teaspoon of salt. Throw in some frozen peas or mix veggies to boost the vitamin content. Now add 1 1/2 cups of water and bring it to boil. When it boils, bring the heat to low and let it cook for 5 more minutes. Turn off the heat but let the pot stay on the stove for five more minutes. Voila, a delicious meal is ready. Your family will be happy!