Rice with vegetables

Listen, I’m getting back to normal. Just so you know.

No, not back in shape. Cycling season may have started, but I’m still nowhere near that.

I mean my photos are back to normal. Yesterday someone actually paid me a compliment: the photo of my Spanish baguette melts had come out quite well. One of mine! You’ll have to take my word for it, but the baguettes were a hundred times better than the photo.

Anyway, I’m getting back in shape – sorry, back to normal – and this recipe and the next will make that painfully clear.

Yes, this rice looks particularly bad. I’m sure someone on Facebook will take great pains to point that out. Oh well. I’d gone quite a stretch today on next to no food, so I needed something for a very late lunch or a very early dinner. And since I’m leaving Warsaw for 3 days, I had to clear out the fridge a bit. Rice with vegetables it was.

Simple idea, primitive technique (though the rice cooks in the pan rather than in a pot of water), and the taste? Surprisingly good. It was my first time making rice with carrot blitzed in a blender. I recommend it. The egg really brings out the flavour. Honestly, don’t let the looks put you off (I’m sure you’ll make a better job of plating it up). Give it a go, I say.

At a glance: 

Prep time: 20 minutes

Serves: two people or one fat bloke

Calories: vegans don’t count calories

Ingredients for vegan rice:

• a bag of jasmine rice
• 1 onion
• 2 shallots
• two carrots
• two cloves of garlic
• a piece of ginger (2 cm)
• a 15 cm piece of leek
• half a yellow pepper
• 1 hen’s egg
• olive oil
• ground black pepper
• 1 vegetable stock cube
• salt

How to make rice in a frying pan:

I dissolved the vegetable stock cube in a cup of hot water. I finely chopped the onion and shallots.

I heated the olive oil in a frying pan and cooked the onion and shallots until translucent. Once they were ready, I emptied the bag of jasmine rice into the pan and fried it briefly. When the grains looked nicely translucent I poured in the cup of stock. I turned down the “flame” (from 6 to 5 on my hob’s scale of 1–10). While the rice cooked and absorbed the water, I got on with the rest of the vegetables.

I peeled the carrots, garlic and ginger, cut them into a few pieces and put them in the chopper attachment of my blender. I blitzed them into tiny pieces. I chopped the leek and pepper into small pieces too.

Once the rice had absorbed the water and was no longer hard (I added about another half cup of water along the way), I turned the “flame” up to 6, tipped in the carrot, garlic and ginger and mixed thoroughly. I added the leek and pepper and stirred again.

After about a minute of stirring I added the egg. I fried everything for about another 3 minutes, stirring thoroughly all the time. All done. Enjoy!