In an effort to extend my blogging range I present a recipe. I generally have two recipes on the go at any given time. One of them is normally pasta-pesto-tuna because it’s piss easy and quick. The other changes every few months. Currently it’s a veggie thing on rice. Not sure if it has a name. Probably does. It’s a bit like a stir fry except it gets a bit soggy towards the end.
You start with five or six vegetables, one of which is an onion (or similar). Removing the onion form the equation you split the veg into hard and soft. Hard usually consists of potatoes, carrots, parsnip, etc. Chop these into small bits and boil them for a while.
Meanwhile chop the soft veg (courgettes, mushrooms, broccoli, etc) into similarly small bits and chop the onion (or similar) into teeny tiny chunks.
As the hard vegs starts turning into soft veg and slips off the knife you plunge in the boiling pan, switch on the rice cooker. You may not have a rice cooker but I do and don’t know how to make rice without one. So you’re on your own there. With the rice starting to bubble fry your onions (or similar), followed by your soft veg, followed by your latterly hard veg.
Next chuck in a tin of chopped tomatoes. Cheap ones are fine. Add a bunch of herbs and spices to taste. I like the Sweet Chili Sauce you find in Chinese supermarkets. Bring to hot, then lower the heat to simmer as the rice finishes.
Serve on a bed of rice with liberal amounts of soy sauce.
Because it’s veg it’ll keep with no worries about reheating so I usually make enough for a couple of meals. Keeps me off the pasta-pesto-tuna.
I was going to post a photo but I ated it before thinking of writing this entry. But I’m sure you can imagine what it looks like. Kinda red with bits of green here and there. On rice.
Yum!
You feel the need to add tuna to pasta pesto? Put the tuna in a sandwich and have it later.
For your veg thing, if your hard veg doesn’t have spuds in it, you can probably avoid boiling the carrots and what-not seperately. It won’t take any longer, won’t taste any different, and it’ll be one less pan involved. Fewer pans is always a bonus.
Just fry it round a bit with your onion, throw in a splash of water, and maybe clang the lid on for a couple of minutes. Add your softs and your tomato. If you have anything green and leafy, leave it to the very end, pile it on top and bang the lid on. Spinach will cook down in about a minute, kale/cabbage/pak choi/ will need a bit longer.
Bit of ginger and garlic in there at the beginning would be fun too.
I’d go ginger, garlic, turmeric, cumin and chilli powder.
If you wanted to go fancy you could mix up some sunflower and sesame seeds with a bit of soy sauce and stick them under the grill for a couple of minutes, sprinkle some of them on top at the end (do a load at once and save what you don’t need in a jar for next time).
Extra fancy – natural yoghurt, finely sliced cucumber and lemon juice all mixed up. Slap it on top or on the side.
(All the above stolen wholesale – albeit probably inaccurately – from Delia).
I even skip the boiling part if I do have spuds in.Then again, I only use them for vindaloo-type recipes where the total cooking time is a bit longer. And I don’t mind if they keep a bit of a bite to them.
Garlic, turmeric, koriander powder, cummin, lots of chilli and cloves are my poison. Ginger optional but used more often lately.