I picked up a bag of black rice from one of the independent grocery stores around here and wow – where have you been all my life you lovely little bag of awesomeness!!
Not only is black rice super tasty, it’s extremely good for you too – score!
Black rice takes a lot longer to cook than white or brown but it has a really great flavour and is worth the extra time. Mine took about 30-40minutes to be ready… totally worth the wait. Plus, it adds a whole other element as it stains everything this cool purple colour! Be sure to line a container with cling wrap before storing excess as you may end up with purple tupperware!
I whipped this salad up using veggies that I needed to use up and it’s delicious! I realised, while writing this, the reason I seem to blog about baking rather than anything else I cook is that I struggle to articulate the cooking methods. With baking it’s pretty straightforward, put in bowl, mix and bake! Don’t get me wrong, this salad is ridiculously easy, it’s just my cooking is a bit of this, bit of that, chuck that in here (a little crazy!) let’s just see how well I go at putting it down in print!!
To make this vegan, omit yoghurt.
The bits and pieces
1 cup black rice, cooked as per instructions on packet
1/2 spanish onion, chopped
1 small sweet potato, cubed
3 small potatoes of your choice (kipflers or chats are always good), cubed
1 can lentils, drained
1 punnet cherry tomatoes, halved
2 whole beetroots
1 decent handful green beans, topped, tailed and halved
1 handful coriander, roughly chopped
Juice of 1/2 lemon
2 tbsp Greek Yoghurt
1 tsp hot paprika
1 tsp cumin seeds
olive oil
Pre-heat your oven to around 175°C. Wrap beets in foil, place on baking tray and pop in oven – do this first! The beetroots will need a bit longer to cook than the potatoes.
You can either steam your potato and sweet potato for 5 minutes before whacking in the oven to roast or put them straight in the oven. It’ll just take a little longer if you don’t steam them first.
On a baking tray, place sweet potato and potato and drizzle olive oil over the top and place in oven to join the beets. Bake for 15 minutes (or until golden and crunchy).
Meanwhile, in a large fry-pan over mid-high heat, add olive oil and pop in onion to soften for 5 minutes. Add green beans, cumin and paprika, stirring constantly. Add rice and lentils to the pan and turn heat down to medium-low.
Remove your veggies from the oven and unwrap beetroots. I used organic beets so I kept the skin on as they tasted lovely, I have however, used non-organic before and the skins were quite bitter so you may want peel these before chopping into small pieces.
Add remaining ingredients to pan, except for coriander, lemon juice and yoghurt.
Drizzle lemon juice over the salad and mix through. Turn off heat and add coriander.
Serve into 2 large bowls and place a dollop of Greek yoghurt on each. Season with salt and pepper to taste.
There you have it – one of the easiest dinners and tastiest I’ve made! Enjoy!
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