Fried rice with mustard greens

Reader update: My internet connection has just been restored after almost three weeks. I have been receiving some of the entries for JFI Chillies, and sorry if I am unable to respond to each of your mails since I am travelling for the next 10 days. Indira has been kind enough to take on any queries you might have. The round up shall be done as promised by 8th August.

Mustard greens - then and now

It is a great pleasure for us city folks, to grow edible plants in our small balconies and then find ways to use them in our kitchen. These mustard greens sprouted from the mustard seeds I generally threw into a Chinese Bamboo pot and they grew out beautifully. Even when the shoots were just out (in about 5-7 days after sowing the seeds), the tiniest of leaves screamed out loud saying "I am mustard". What I mean to say isthat the pungent mustard flavour that some of us love and others love to hate, was very strongly evident even in the tiny shoots.

They took about 2 months to grow into bigger leaves in this pot, the delay probably being due to over crowding. The harvest was not enough to make sarson ka saag, so I had to be content using the leaves along with some other veggies in a fried rice.

Mustard greens fried rice

Ingredients

1 ½ cups cooked rice, separated with a fork

2 tsp olive oil

½ tsp cumin seeds

4 cloves

1 medium onion, sliced

1 carrot, cut into matchsticks

¼ cup sliced spring onion greens

¼ tsp turmeric powder

½ tsp red chilli powder

¼ tsp garam masala powder

½ tsp salt

¼ cup sliced mustard greens

Directions

Heat the oil in a wok. Splutter the cumin seeds and cloves, in hot oil.

Add the onion slices, carrot sticks and spring onion greens. Saute on low flame for 3 minutes, till onions and carrots are soft and greens have wilted.

Mix in the spice powders, salt and stir till the spices uniformly coat the vegetables.

Add the rice to the wok with the mustard greens. Stir well for a minute till rice is heated through and ingredients are well mixed.

Serve hot with yogurt and a sweet mango pickle.

Note:
This is a great way to use up left over rice. You can use any kind of greens such as kale, collard greens, radish greens to add a bit of bitterness to the rice instead of mustard greens.