Spinach and rice casserole

 

I love spinach and there are many ways to cook it. This is as very simple recipe and if you are one of these terribly organised people, you can even cook the rice well in advance, in which case it will go together very quickly.

 

There’s no real point in specifying a weight of spinach – you tend to get what you’re given and take it. Suffice it to say that there has to be enough to feed two people. If you’re unused to cooking spinach, be warned: a big bunch that will hardly stuff into the shopping bag becomes only a few cupfuls when it’s cooked.

 

Serves 2

 

Ingredients

 

1½ cups brown rice

bunch of spinach

1 tbsp olive oil

2 garlic cloves

1/2 cup grated cheese

2 eggs

nutmeg

cracked black pepper

2 tbsp sesame seeds

 

Method:

• Cook the rice in the usual fashion.
• Wash the spinach and then roughly chop it. 
• Heat the olive oil in a large frying pan, add the spinach and cook it for about 3 minutes. Keep it moving so that it gets coated in oil and the stuff at the top of the pan can cook, too.
• Lower the heat and insert a flame tamer, if necessary. Add the cooked rice, diced garlic and the grated cheese. Mix well.
• Beat the eggs. and stir in with the other ingredients. Season generously with nutmeg, salt and pepper. Smooth the top over and sprinkle with the sesame seeds. 
• Cover and cook over a low heat for 15 minutes. Take off the cooker and leave to stand for 3 or 4 minutes before serving, just in case it has ‘caught’.

Some lightly cooked carrots go well with this.

 

Note:

• If you have an oven, finish it off in there, once you've mixed everything together and added the sesame seeds.  That way you will brown it and get toasted sesame seeds.

Variations:

• Use Swiss chard instead of spinach.
• If you eat eggs, but don't eat dairy products, use vegan cheese or mix 2 tbsp nutritional yeast in with the eggs. 

 

 You will find many more rice recipes here

Red kidney beans and rice, with sweetcorn

 

I used to cook West Indian rice and beans fairly often, when I was voyaging - it's cheap and filling, but it can be pretty uninspiring even with generous amounts of coconut cream, thyme and chilli.  This version is a little more interesting and can be made very quickly, with the judicious use of cans and if you pressure-cook the rice. 

 

Serves 2

 

Ingredients

 

1/2 cup red kidney beans

2 tbsp olive oil

1 large onion, chopped

1 garlic clove

1/2 cup rice

1 cup water

1 small can sweetcorn

1 tsp thyme

1/2 tsp dried chillies

1 tbsp cream of coconut

400 g/14 oz can diced tomatoes or 3 medium ones, chopped

salt and pepper

 

Method:

• Cook the kidney beans in the usual way.
• In a large saucepan, fry the chopped onion and garlic in the oil. Add the rice and fry for a few more minutes, until the grains become opaque. Add the water, bring to the boil and simmer gently for about 30 minutes.
• Gently mix in the drained beans, sweetcorn, tomatoes, thyme, chilli and coconut, being careful not to mash the beans. Keep hot over a very low heat until the rice is cooked
• Heat everything through and season carefully.

Serve with a green vegetable.

 

Note:

• This is the basic dish. Green pepper is a pleasant addition
• Mustard greens go very well with this, if you can find them; or chard or cabbage.  
• Cream of coconut - like a hard slab of butter - isn't always easy to obtain.  Use coconut milk or cream instead.

You will find many more rice recipes here

West Indian rice and beans

This is real voyaging on a small income food: dirt cheap and from food you have in the lockers.  It's filling and easy to cook.  I love kidney beans, but when I was voyaging, found myself cooking them too often as Chilli sin carne, but this recipe makes a pleasant change and is particularly good in areas where fresh vegetables are limited.  You can also use black beans - they are very popular in the West Indies.  

 

Don't be put off by the amount of thyme - it is meant to season the food quite strongly.  Cream of coconut - like a hard slab of butter - isn't always easy to obtain.  Use coconut milk or cream instead.

Serves 2

 

Ingredients

 

1/2 cup kidney or black beans, soaked and cooked

1/2 cup rice

1 cup water

2 tbsp oil

1 onion

1 garlic clove

1 1/2 tsp thyme

salt and pepper

 

Method:

• Cook the beans.  Drain black beans carefully so that the meal doesn't turn out grey! Put the rice in the water, add salt and cook in the usual way.
• About ten minutes before the rice is cooked, heat the oil in a saucepan and add the chopped onion and diced garlic. Cook them until they’re softened then add the thyme.  
• When the rice is cooked, turn it out of the pan onto the vegetables and add the beans, salt and pepper.
• Carefully combine everything, ensuring that the rice and beans don’t get mashed. Cover and cook until everything is piping hot.
• Serve with a green vegetable.

Variations:

• A chilli pepper, fresh or dried go well in this recipe - indeed I'd recommend it.
• 1/2 tsp dried chilli flakes also works. 
• If you can't get cream of coconut, substitute a small can of coconut cream (or use dried coconut milk anda little extra water, if you have it).
• Traditionally, a sliced carrot was also added. 
• You could add some allspice for a Jamaican flavour!

You will find many more rice recipes here

Special rice

This is a way of cooking rice so that it looks attractive, when you’ve worked a bit harder at the main course and want the rice to complement your efforts. It’s not difficult, but worth the extra few minutes it takes to make it.  Obviously, the ingredients aren't going to combine that well with your Spanish stew, but it will pretty much go with any recipe that originates east of Italy.  It was intended as a sort of Indian pulao.

Serves 2

 

Ingredients

 

knob of butter OR 2 tsp olive oil

1/2 cup rice

1/4 tsp turmeric

1¼ cups water

2 tbsp raisins

1/4 tsp dried, minced garlic

1 tbsp dried onion OR 1/4 onion, sliced

1 cardamom pod

2 cloves

 

Method:

• Melt the butter in a saucepan and gently fry the rice and turmeric for a couple of minutes.
• Add the water and while it’s coming to the boil, add the raisins, garlic, onion and spices.
• When the water has boiled, stir, cover and simmer for 35 minutes.
• By now most of the water should be absorbed. Take the rice off the heat and leave it for a further 5 – 10 minutes to finish cooking.
• Remove the cardamom and cloves before serving.

You will find many more rice recipes here

Rice and black-eyed peas with Swiss chard - Lobhia saag pulao

 

This recipe is very freely adapted from one of Vegan Richa’s. For a ‘real’ curry, there are no weird and wonderful spices and there aren’t too many of them, either, which made me feel that the recipe might be tackled by a cook who likes curry, but doesn’t want to faff around too much. It’s a one-pot meal and Swiss chard, if bought very fresh and looked after with loving care, will last for 4 or 5 days, which will take you well into a thousand-mile passage. Spinach would also go very well in this recipe.

 

Black-eyed peas are quite popular in Indian cuisine and have the advantage that they don’t need soaking. They also need the same time to cook as brown basmati rice, so make a perfect match. This is a very pleasant curry, even following my method rather than making it the ‘right way’, which involves a blender and thus some awkward washing up.

Serves 2

Ingredients

1 tbsp of oil or ghee

1 medium onion, sliced

1 green chilli pepper, chopped

1 tsp ginger paste or chopped ginger

3 cloves garlic, diced

1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp garam masala

1/4 tsp ground cinnamon

1/4 tsp ground cardamom (seeds if you don’t have ground)

2 medium tomatoes, chopped

3 or 4 large leaves of Swiss chard

1/2 cup brown basmati rice

1/2 cup dried black-eyed peas

2½ cups water

salt

1/2 tsp kasuri methi/dried fenugreek leaves

Method:

• Heat the oil in the pressure cooker over medium heat. Add the onion, chilli, ginger and garlic, sprinkle over the salt and mix it in.
• Cook until the onion is translucent.
• Now add the garam masala, cinnamon, and cardamom, lower the heat and cook until the spices smell fragrant.
• Stir in the chopped tomatoes and cook for several minutes until they become juicy. Loosely cover and add a tablespoon of water if the mix seems to be getting to dry: it very much depends on your tomatoes.
• In the meantime, dice the chard. Don’t worry that there won’t be any texture after it has been cooked: the original recipe calls for it to be blended.
• Now add the black-eyed peas to the pressure cooker, together with the rice and the water.
• Put on the lid, bring up to pressure and cook for 10 minutes, let the pressure reduce naturally.
• Taste the mixture: you will probably need more salt. If it seems very wet, let it simmer over a low heat until some of the water evaporates. The amount of moisture will depend on both the tomatoes and the greens.
• Add the dried fenugreek, if you’re using it.
• Serve hot, maybe with roti if you’re really hungry!

Note:

• If you are using spinach, you would want ‘ bunch’. It is usually sold in an unspecified amount, but as it’s not filling and it shrinks away to nothing once you heat it, unless the bunch looks enormous you’re unlikely to have too much.

Variation:

• Try other greens, such as mustard greens or spring cabbage.
• Whole lentils would also work with this recipe, as would mung beans.
• Long grain brown rice should also cook satisfactorily in the same time as the black-eyed beans. If yours seems to take a very long time, I suggest adding it with the water and cooking it for a few minutes, letting the pressure reduce, then adding the beans and spinach to ensure that the rice is cooked through without cooking the beans to a mush.

 

You will find many more rice recipes here

Chickpeas with mushrooms and rice

Sharp-eyed observers may notice a family resemblance to one or two other recipes on this blog.  I make no apologies. Mushrooms and chickpeas were made for each other and are complemented superbly by tarragon and green peppercorns. 

 

Mushrooms, a sublime gift from a benign Providence, are becoming more and more easily available to cruising people. Because of this, I include them rather more often than I would have done had I written this blog 15 years ago - if there were blogs, 15 years ago. While canned mushrooms are a sad travesty of the real thing, ‘freeze-dried’ ones are a very acceptable substitute and, where available, are not outrageously expensive. While they don’t need pre-soaking, it does them no harm. If you're cooking the chickpeas from scratch, rather than using a tin, put the dried mushrooms in at the same time. Half a cup of mushrooms would need about the same water. You can of course buy such exotics as porcini or Chinese dried mushrooms, although I find the latter rather too chewy and, particularly the dark ones, slightly overpowering unless diced quite small. On the other hand, those packets of Chinese, dried 'white' mushrooms are wonderfully versatile and have a lovely flavour profile.

Serves 2

 

Ingredients 

1/2 cup chick peas, soaked

3/4 cup rice

2½ cups water

2 tbsp olive oil

6 or 8 fresh mushrooms OR 1/3 cup freeze dried mushrooms

1 onion, chopped

1 clove of garlic, chopped

1 tsp tarragon

2 tsp green peppercorns, crushed

salt

 

Method:

• Put the rice and chick peas in the pressure cooker and cook for 15 minutes. If you are using dried mushrooms, put these in at the same time and add an extra 1/2 cup of water.
• While these are cooking, heat the oil in another saucepan, slice the mushrooms and chop up the onion and garlic. Put them all into the pan and cook over a medium heat, turning frequently to prevent them from burning. Be gentle – you don’t want to break up the mushroom slices.
• Using a pestle and mortar, crush the peppercorns and grind the tarragon in with them. (If you don’t have a pestle, crush the peppercorns in a shallow bowl with the back of a spoon. Be careful, they tend to fly about a bit.) Add these to the vegetables and stir to mix everything together. Lower the heat to a minimum.
• When the chickpeas, etc have finished cooking, reduce pressure gradually and then empty the contents of the pressure cooker into the saucepan. Mix carefully, and leave for a few minutes so that the flavours mingle before serving the food.

Variations: 

• If you’re not fond of ‘spicy’ food, you may find 2 tsp of green peppercorns a bit much. In that case, reduce the amount to 1 tsp.
• If you substitute 1/4 cup wild rice for brown rice, you get a luxurious version, which you can happily serve to any guests.
• If you don't happen to have green peppercorns aboard, use black
• Thyme can be substituted for tarragon: it goes well with mushrooms, but will, of course, impart a completely different flavour to the dish.

 

You will find many more rice recipes here