This recipe is from the Patrick Holford Low GL Diet book and easy as pie as many of the vegetarian recipes are. It takes about 50 minutes to make including cooking time and you only use a single pan. Now that’s cooking!
As a variation you can replace the chestnuts (that according to Etienne taste like nothing) with almonds or cashews, depending on what your fancy is.
- 170g Peeled Chestnuts (the tins here have 140g and that’s fine for me)
- 1tbsp olive oil
- 70ml brown basmati rice
- 1 small onion, chopped
- 2 cloves garlic, crushed
- 2.5cm fresh garlic (I use about 1/2 tsp dry ginger)
- 150ml water with some vegetable stock
- 113g chopped mushrooms (I ignore this and use a whole punnet, it cooks away anyway)
- 2tsp soy sauce
- 1/2 cup frozen baby peas
Heat oil in the pan and fry the uncooked rice until it’s pale brown (about 3-4 minutes). Add garlic and ginger, stir for 30 seconds, add onion and cook for a further 3 minutes. Then, add mushrooms and fry for another 3 minutes.
Add in the stock and chestnuts and simmer over a low heat for about 35 minutes until the rice is soft.
Lastly, add the peas and soy sauce and let it cook for a minute or so until bright green. (the peas, not the rest of the dish)
It sounds like a weird recipe, but it’s amazing!
Sounds good…..but what could we replace nuts with?
If you wanted to keep it vegetarian probably chickpeas or beans? Otherwise you could probably add chicken pieces? Or leave out the nuts and just serve as a side dish?
That sounds lekker! Did you use water chestnuts or regular chestnuts? If you used regular chestnuts, where did you get them from? I’m really enjoying your Meatless Monday recipes – thank you. BTW How many does this serve?
Water chestnuts I think? They were tinned from Pick and Pay, about R13 for 140g?
I had it as a mains for myself, Etienne and the kids had it as a side dish and there was still more than enough for lunch for me today. Maybe make more rice and see?
It does look a bit weird but definitely doable and so easy!
I would actually use almonds or cashews. I would also use a whole punnet of mushrooms. Going to try this later this week and let you know how it went.
Please do?