back Lemon Rice Ingredients: Rice 2 cups Oil – 5/6 tea spoons (vegetable/canola/olive/peanut oils etc) Fresh Lemons – 1 to ½ depending on taste. You may also use lime juice available. Mustard seeds-half tea spoon Cumin seeds-half tea spoon Green chilly- 2/3 - thin variety will be good - wash and cut them into small pieces, good if cut vertically Dry red chilly-2 - cut into small pieces Turmeric – less than half spoon Asafoetida – little qty (less than ¼ tea spoon) Curry leaves- (they add flavor to the dish) wash five to six leaves and keep ready If leaves are too large cut into halves Whole Peanuts-25/30 Cilantro to garnish – wash it thoroughly Salt to taste. Procedure: 1. Cook rice separately with little less than 2 cups of water for each cup of rice. (Hope that you know how to cook rice. For Lemon rice, rice should cook about 90-95% only). 2. Heat the oil in a saucepan on a medium flame. 3. Fry all the peanuts until light brown. Remove them leaving the oil in the saucepan. Put all the peanuts on the rice 4. Put all spices seeds in to the oil. Mix with spoon. 5. Once the cumin seeds start becoming brown (they take too little time actually and you have to be quick enough for the next) add green pieces in to the oil, mix with spoon. You may like to cover the saucepan. 6. Once green chilly pieces loose greenish color (at least in half of the pieces) add turmeric, red chilly and Asafoetida into the oil. Mix well with spoon. In one minute switch off the stove. 7. Immediately add curry leaves into the hot mix and cover with a lid. Now you will have a strong smell similar to the one you felt when you passed by any Indian house- nevertheless you will enjoy the food. Keep the doors open just when you heat the oil and until 5 minutes after you prepare the rice completely for the smell to go out. 8. Loosen the rice, grain by grain, after it cools down a bit. “No fumes” from the hot rice is the condition when you are ready for the next step). 9. Mix all the contents in the saucepan with rice. 10. Add lemon juice and salt depending on taste. And mix well. 11. Garnish with cilantro. 12. Now your favorite Lemon Rice is ready. It is good to eat a bit warm but do not reheat. It tastes good even at room temperature. You may like to warm a bit to room temps after refrigeration but never heat it lest it turns bitter. 13. Be careful not to eat the chilly.