Category: rice

paella

…Or it might be jambalaya. I’m not sure what the criteria is. It’s rice ‘n’ stuff in one pan, anyway.

My old chum chorizo makes a special guest appearance, but it’s the vegetables that do the work in this one. I fried the chorizo a bit to char the edges and encourage their spicy-sweet juices to leak out, then put them to one side. Then in go the veg: red onion, celery, carrot. After they’ve tenderised a bit, in go a courgette, some garlic and a pepper. After a couple of minutes I added some basmati rice and tossed that around to get up to heat. I wanted an alcoholic flavour so I added some Cinzano of all things at this point – slightly bitter, slightly sweet.

Then the chorizo went back, along with a pint of veg stock, some saffron and some paprika. Lid on, and left it for 20 mins or so. I came back to find a pan full of sticky rice and tender veg. Garnished with a little fresh parsley and shovelled away heaped spoonfuls at a time. Dinners in one pan rock!

food mushroom pancetta rice

pancetta & pea risotto

Risotto is a deeply calming dish, both to cook and especially to eat. What amazes me about risotto is that it starts the same but can end so many ways depending on what you add.

It starts with: onions fried gently, then the heat turned up as your arborio or carnaroli rice is added. A handy tip for measuring rice: two handfuls per person. The rice needs to get hot and toasted all over to prepare it for absorbing stock. Stock should be boiling the background (thank you, last week’s chicken stock). Booze is needed here, a glass of white wine is best. Allow this to bubble to nearly nothing. Then stock is added a ladelful at a time, allowing it to reduce away until sticky. You need a bit of armwork, stirring away to move the rice off the bottom of the pan. Once the rice is tender and tasty, you can eat as is (a little dull) or add what works for you.

For me, it’s grated parmesan and butter, vigorously stirred through. In this case I added pancetta fried just beforehand, kept to one side then put back into the rice at the end. Some frozen peas and it’s ready. Eat with a spoon and a lazy grin.

chicken curry food rice

chicken curry

Can the world take another generic ‘curry’ recipe? At least one more it seems.

We kick off with ginger, onions, lentils, turmeric and cumin with 2 pints of water. This is left for 40 mins, then diced chicken is added for a further 25 mins. As seasoning right at the end, cumin seeds, ginger, garlic, cayenne pepper, nutmeg, cinnamon and salt is fried until aromatic, then pounded to nothing and added to the curry with some lemon juice. Turned out pretty good.

The little beige puddle in the corner is one of my fave accompaniments: cashew butter. It’s just toasted cashews and cumin seeds blitzed with oil and salt. Yum!

coriander cumin food rice spinach turkey

turkey pilaff

Uncle Ben’s make this rice stuff, pre-cooked and sealed in packets. It’s dead easy as a side dish, but I wanted to do more. I hit on the idea of a pilaff-style dish.

I started by dry-frying spinach with sliced garlic and grated nutmeg. When it had shrunk to hardly anything (always amazes me how much water disappears!) I removed it and drained the excess water off. Then in the same pan I fried diced turkey breast that had been marinated in cumin and coriander. As it is nearly done I added a packet of vegetable ready-cooked rice, and after a minute added the spinach back in. Served with pitta and lemon wedges.

Takes about ten minutes, and is very tasty.