GHEE RICE (NEYCHOR)

This special Malabar ney chor can be whipped up very quickly to entertain unexpected guests.  It can be served with a nice chicken or lamb curry and other side dishes.  My favorite combination is with a coconut based lamb stew. It is traditionally cooked only in ghee.  My version uses a combination of vegetable oil and butter.

As an aside, I have started thumbing through my copy of Ummi Abdulla's Malabar Muslim Cookery.  Ummi is widely renowned as the queen of Malabar Muslim cuisine.  To date, all her books have been in the local language Malayalam.  During my last visit to Calicut. I found to my great joy that she has published her first book in English.  I was so excited that I bought several copies, one for each of my kids, one for the house, and several more to give away as gifts.  I am looking at this book as the Bible, or should I say Quran of Malabar Muslim cooking! 

Ingredients
Rice - 400 grams or 2 cups (Best made with a good quality long grain Basmati rice.  I am partial to the Tilda brand.)
Oil - 2 tbsp
Butter - 1 tbsp
Cardamoms - 2 (You may lightly crush the pods so that they open slightly.)
Cloves - 4
Cinnamon - 2 sticks
Onion - 1 large, thinly sliced
Salt - to taste
Water - 4 cups boiling hot water

Wash the rice well, and leave it to soak in water while preparing the ingredients for this recipe.  Heat the oil.  Add the butter. When the butter has melted, add the whole spices.

Then add the thinly sliced onions and sautee on high heat, stirring constantly till onions are fried but not brown.  The drain the soaking rice well and add to the pot.  Stir fry the rice, mixing well so that the rice is well coated with oil.  Take care not to stir rice roughly.  Do not break the rice grains.  They must remain whole.

After stir frying the rice for a few minutes, pour in 4 cups of boiling water.  Bring to a rolling boil. Mix gently and make sure that none of the rice or onion is stuck to the bottom of the pot.  Add salt to taste.  You can make ney chor in this pot on the stove top itself.  After some time on a rolling boil, you will see all the rice starting to absorb the water and holes forming on top as in the picture below.  When this happens, reduce heat to low and cover the utensil and cook till rice is done. 

My easy, fool proof method is to start this recipe on the stove top.  After pouring in the boiling water and bringing it to a rolling boil, I transfer it to all a microwaveable container, and use the sensor cook option to cook rice in the microwave.  In this method, there is no risk of the rice at the bottom of the container burning.  

Serving Suggestion