Indian Spiced Tomato Rice, Tomato Pulav, Tava Pulav

Tava pulav is a famous Mumbai street food. A very colourful, lip smacking yummy, spicy tomato rice that is sold in most of the pav bhaji stalls. The left over pav bhaji masala is mixed with rice to make this delicious pulav. So, all the things that go into a pav bhaji go into this pulav.

A quick and simple one dish meal. The best part is this pulav can be made from left over rice. We Indians love our rice and there's always some left over rice which worries us. :-)

There's one place in bangalore which makes this yummy pulav and people from all over bangalore folk to this place just to have the "tava pulav" as it is known, since its made on a huge tawa. The place is called Sagar.

Ingredients:

2 large ripened tomatoes
3 cups cooked rice
2 large onions cubed
2-3 tablespoons oil
1 medium green capsicum diced
1-1/2 teaspoons ginger-garlic paste
1 teaspoon red chilli paste
2 green chillies finely chopped
1/2 cup tomato sauce
1 tablespoon pav bhaji masala
1/2 tea spoon turmeric
1/2 cup boiled green peas
5-6 florets cauliflower grated and boiled (optional)
1 big potato peeled,diced and boiled (optional)
50 grams diced/cubed cottage cheese (paneer) (optional)
Salt to taste
1 tablespoon lemon juice
3 tablespoons chopped fresh coriander leaves

Preparation Method:

Heat a wok or big, deep nonstick pan. Add oil into the pan and add ginger garlic paste when the oils hot. Sauté for ten seconds.

Add green chillies chopped and saute for ten seconds.

Add the roughly chopped onions and sauté until they become soft and translucent. That's when they become sweet.

Add the tomatoes and let them cook.

When the tomatoes are soft, capsicum and saute for a minute. So that they are a little crisp.

Then add tomato ketchup. You can even use tomato puree instead of tomato ketchup.

Then quickly add red chilli powder, turmeric and pav bhaji masala and mix well.

Add cooked green peas, cauliflower, potato and mix.

Add 1 cup water and stir.

Add the small cubes of cottage cheese and salt and stir. Allow it to cook for a minute.

Then reduce the flame, add the cooked rice and mix gently and let the rice get heated through.

The rice used, should be nice and separated. Water is added to cook the paneer and rice a little.

After few minutes of cooking and constant stirring, put off flame.

Add lemon juice and coriander leaves and mix well.

Serve hot with raita.

P.S:

Add vegetables of your choice like carrots etc.

You can also do the frying part in a pressure cooker, add rice grains and water to it and cook it as well just like how you cook any other pulav. But the method described above is how it is ritually done.

Preparing the raita:

Add finely chopped tomatoes and onions to 1/2 cup curds. Add salt and mix and serve.

Prepartion time: 30-40 mins

Tags: Rice items, Pulav, Indian Spiced Rice, Street food, Spicy Tomato Rice, Left over rice recipe