“Ultimate” is a bold statement, perhaps, but this rice dish really is a flavoursome winner. It’s yummy as an accompaniment to grilled fish or poultry, but it also works well with a fragrant butternut squash curry (recipe to follow, if you’d like).
Ultimate savoury rice
Ingredients
- 350g basmati rice
- A green pepper, finely diced
- 3 sticks of celery, finely diced
- 3 shallots, finely diced
- 2 tsp curry powder
- ½ tsp cayenne pepper
- Splash of oil
- 1½ pint of low-salt vegetable stock
- Optional extra heat: a finely chopped chilli of your preference
Method
- Rinse the rice until the water runs clear. Set aside.
- Heat the oil in a saucepan, add the vegetables and cook over a moderate heat until softened. This should take about 10 minutes or so.
- Meanwhile, make up the stock (or heat it up in a separate pan if you’ve bought liquid stock).
- Add the spices to the vegetables and stir for a couple of minutes.
- Add a little of the hot stock, stir well, and then then tip in the rice, followed by the rest of the stock.
- Season with salt and pepper to your taste, bring the mixture to a boil and then lower the heat to a simmer. Cover and cook until the rice is cooked to your desired “bite texture”. This should take around 15-20 minutes.
Siobhan Blunden-Currie is a head of department in a secondary school. She will be providing recipes every Friday for Tes
