How To Preserve Lemon Juice

Frozen Lemon Juice ice Cubes

In rainy season and in winters lemon crop is harvested as they ripen in these season but in summers when we aspire to have cool lemonade/ lemon sherbet / or we need to fresh lemon juice for any savory or dessert then we have to make do with expensive and less juicy lemons. Normally it is seen that citrus fruits are converted to sherbet concentrate by mixing it with sugar syrup and adding preservatives or making pickle. But these are useful to make sweet cold drinks only. What do we do when we want to have only salted lemon sherbet or want to have fresh lime soda with salt? What do we do when we want fresh lemon juice in any recipe? This kept on bugging me till one day when I had lots of lemon and tried this method to keep the juice fresh and nice. Wow what a discovery! It solved all my problems and now I get lemons in scores when least expensive in market and preserve them. 
I had blogged about how to preserve whole lemon also but if they are in large number then space crunch in freezer occurs. This metod solves problem of space crunch and bringing the frozen lemons to room temperature before squeezing.

Preparation time: Depends upon the number of lemons used

Cooking time: None

Ingredients Required:

• Lemons as many as you can lay hand in crop season

Direction To Preserve The Lemon Juice:

• Wash the lemons and dry with a cloth.
• Count the number of lemons you are squeezing.
• Cut them to half and squeeze the juice.
• When juice of all lemons has been removed then sieve them to remove seeds.
• Take ice trays and pour the juice in them and put in freezer for setting to ice cubes.
• Count the number of cubes and find out how many cubes have been made out of the lemons you had taken this way you will be able to calculate one cube is equal to how many cubes.

Lemon Juice Cubes

• Take out the lemon juice cubes and store in a good plastic container and use as and when required.

Tips:

• Do not store them in metal container as lemon juice is corrosive.
• Cubes can be made of any size. If they are of small size then you will not have to break them if less quantity is required.

Suggested Variations:

• Some juice can be flavored with ginger juice and frozen.

Frozen Lemon and Ginger Juice  Cubes

Matar Pulav( Rice with Green Peas)

Matar Pulav

Peas have such lovely green color and sweet taste and when cooked with rice the whole appearance and of rice becomes too tempting to resist.  It is a very simple dish to cook but amazing in taste. In Northern India it is a preferred dish of rice in winters as lots of fresh green peas are available in winters. Innovation in the kitchen is every mothers forte, who has to pack the lunch box for the school going children.I used to get my reward when my children used to come grinning happily from school with every grain of the packed food polished off. Matar pulav is very convenient to keep in lunch box with pickle /chutney.

                         

Preparation Time: 10min.

Cooking Time:  30min.

Servings: Makes three large servings.

Ingredients required for Matar Pulav:

• 150gm. Rice
•  250gm. Fresh peas removed from pea pods

Peas

• 1 Tea spoon Cumin seeds Jeera (cumin seeds)
• 1-2 Bay leaves

Condiments for Matar Pulav

• 4-5 Black Pepper pods
•  1 Black cardamon
• 1/2Inch Cinnamon stick
• 3-4 Cloves
• 1/2 Tea spoon Salt (Or to taste)
• 5ml. Ghee/ cooking oil
• Water

Directions for Making Matar Pulav

• Wash rice and soak it in 150ml. water.
• Take soaked rice and cook it in a pan with large amount of water till the rice grain are almost done.
• Drain all water and if the grains are sticking to each other pour water to remove excess starch and allow all water to drain off.

Boiled rice

• Take ghee/ oil in wok and heat on high flame.

Oil being heated in wok

• When ghee/oil is hot add jeera and bay leaves,cinnamon,cloves,pepper.

Bay leaves,cloves,Black cumin,Pepper cinnamon added to hot oil

• When the seedssplutters before it starts getting dark brown add peas and stir for 2min.

Peas added when the cloves and other seeds splutter

Peas mixed with in oil and spices

• Lower the flame and add drained boiled rice. 

Boile rice added to oil, spices and peas

• Add salt,turmeric powder,red chili powder.

Turmeric,Red chili powder,salt added to rice and matar

• Mix nicely and gently.

All spices mixed with rice and matar

• Cover and cook for 5 min. on low flame, with occasional stirring.

Rice and matar with spices being cooked on low flame

• Hot Matar pulav with beautiful yellow and green color is ready to be served.

Delicious Matar Pulav ready to be served

Matar Pulav

 Matar pulav goes best with curd/raita, pickle/chutney. Dal or any gravy is not really required as it is a complete dish by itself. 

http://jyotsna-pant.blogspot.com/2012/06/mango-pickle-north-indian-style.html

http://jyotsna-pant.blogspot.com/2012/06/tangy-mango-pickle-maharashra-style.html

http://jyotsna-pant.blogspot.com/2012/06/spicy-mixed-vegetable-pickle-less-oily.html

http://jyotsna-pant.blogspot.com/2012/06/hariyali-chutney-raw-mango-chutney.html

http://jyotsna-pant.blogspot.com/2011/10/green-coriander-and-mint-chutney.html

   Tips:

• While boiling rice in pan take excess water which can be drained once the rice is cooked.
• Take thick bottom pan to boil rice.
• Do not over cook peas. They will loose color,flavor and taste.
• If you are uncomfortable in boiling rice in pan pressure cook and then wash in flowing water to remove excess starch so that the grains of rice do not stick to each other.

Suggested Variations:

• A quicker version:-
             Quick fix way of making this pulav is add peas, jeera, cinnamon,cloves,bay leaves,turmeric,red chili powder salt ghee/ oil, water to soaked rice and cook in the pressure cooker. Pulav will be ready in 5 min.
• If fresh peas (matar) are not available preserved green peas can be used.
• While boiling rice few pieces of lemon grass can be added.It gives wonderful flavor to the rice.
• Few drops of lemon juice can be added and mixed to the Pulav just before removing from gas. It will change the color of pulav to lemony yellow color.