Peas-and-cashew fried rice with spicy tomato soup--from a girl who hates to cook!

Saturday evening. After spending a really nice morning catching up with my gal pals for breakfast at Linger On, and then spending the next few hours getting long overdue chores at home done, I thought I should make up a treat for the dear hubs. The initial plan was to make mushroom fried rice, but the mushrooms weren't available, so I made do with what I had at home. And here's what I did...

1. Cleaned and boiled the tomatoes in a pressure cooker.
2. Boiled Basmati rice in a microwave oven--used less water and add a little oil so that it didn't turn out sticky and the grains separated easily. Followed it up by boiling frozen peas.
3. Chopped onions into thin, long slices, and finely chopped garlic cloves, ginger, and some dehydrated coriander (keep a bunch wrapped in tissue paper in a fridge for a few days, and it dries up but stays green).
4. Peeled the tomatoes and crushed them in a juicer with some black salt and rock salt. The peels were added to Mojo and Phoebe's boiled rice-lentils-veggies mix. Hardly anything goes to waste in our kitchen.
5. Spread the rice on a tray to cool off, while I gathered all the spices.
6. Heated oil in a soup pan and let some mustard seeds splutter in it to confirm that the temperature was right. Stirred the chopped coriander, garlic, ginger, some bay leaves, and cinnamon in until they changed color. Added the tomato pulp and a little sugar. Cleaned the juicer with some water and added it too. Set it aside after boiling for couple of minutes.
7. Heated oil in a kadhaai and let a few cumin and white sesame seeds splutter in it. Added cashew nuts and fried them until they changed color. Stirred a little green chilly-ginger-garlic paste and some grated dry coconut in. Added some turmeric and Biryaani masaala and stirred the whole mixture for a minute. Added the boiled peas and stirred for another minute. Added the cooled rice and mixed everything together and kept it covered for a minute before turning the heat off.
8. Boiled oil in a mini-kadhaai and fried the onion slices until they turned brown. Spread them on some tissues to cool and get some of the oil off. Then, mixed them into the rice preparation.

Here are some pictures to give you an idea...

I added salt multiple times to various ingredients as per my liking, but you could add it only once to the rice and the soup. I did not mention any portions and avoided mentioning the duration required for each task, because I generally make those up as I go. I am not really a metrics-driven person in this regard. It's got to feel right to me :P

It turned out yummy and the hubs gobbled it up. So did I. Totally worth the effort.

And now, maybe I should change my stance from "I hate cooking" to "I love cooking, at leisure, as hobby to be indulged in, once a month".