Pilaf with home made stock
I have now real and followed so many pilaf recipes, that I’m actually getting pretty good at making my own. Success seems to lie in the stock. In Australia, I usually just use easy-peasy Massel stock powder, but I can’t get anything approximating vegan stock here in Tbilisi, so I make my own, and it works out well.
In my stock I use a handful of chopped mushroom stalks, the outer cabbage leaves and any left over cabbage stalk, parsley stalks, carrots, a tomato, brown and red onion skins and ends, and all the little tiny garlic cloves I can find (I use the ones from the middle because I have chopping them later, and using them in stock means I don’t have to feel guilty for being lazy). I add a tiny bit of salt, and sometimes a little sugar. I generally make about 1.5 litre at a time.
Keira’s Pilaf Recipe
serves 3
- 2 tablespoon olive oil
- 1 cup white rice (long grain)
- 1 medium brown onion, diced
- 1 small red onion, diced
- 3 cloves garlic, minced
- any vegetables you want, small dice
- 2 cups strong stock
- water as needed
- Juice of 1/2 lemon
- salt and pepper, to taste
- sultanas or raisins, if desired.
- dash of chosen spices – I use cinnamon, clove, coriander seed and some curry, depending on what I feel like.
- In a large, non-stick frying pan, heat the oil, and add the rice. Fry on medium heat for about 5 minutes.
- Add the onion and fry until translucent, stirring frequently.
- Add the garlic and any vegetables or fruits you will be using, such as capsicum or zucchini, and fry for a furhter 5 minutes.
- Add one or two squeezes of lemon juice now, to help break up the rice.
- Add the stock. Leave until all of the liquid has been absorbed. This took me about 15 minutes.
- Test – you may need more water, depending on what type of rice you used.
- Remove from heat when the rice is cooked. Taste, add rest of lemon juice, salt, pepper, and spices. Fluff with a fork and serve with other dishes.
Note: If we’re having pilaf at lunch I like to add a little nooch at the end. Don’t do this at dinner tough, because the B6 in the nooch tends to stop people from sleeping.
Cabbage with Tomatoes
I Have no photo of the cabbage and tomatoes dish, because it wasn’t actually until after I made it that I found out it was Turkish.One of the only green vegetables we can get here is cabbage, so I had planned to fry some up with onion and garlic as per usual. I added a chopped tomato, a little stock, a little tomato paste and some cayenne pepper, on a whim.
Turns out what I made closely approximates this dish, so there you go – I’m a food psychic, or something, because I didn’t see this site until long after we ate the meal.
Chickpea Salad
The salad wasn’t so much Turkish as Turkish-inspired. I just threw together some onion, garlic, parsley, coriander, chickpeas and red capsicum, to add some protein and crunch to the meal.
Around the World Vegan's Vegbox 