Lemon and curry leaf rice

To finish the “I cook with lemon this week”, this is another recipe adapted from Yotam Ottolenghi’s last book Plenty More published in 2014 (find the book here). The first time I made this recipe I didn’t have curry leaves. I couldn’t find any in stores here, and out of desperation I used dried kaffir lime leaves instead. It turned out to be good, but obviously it was not the same…

So I ended up buying dried curry leaves online – for example here (affiliate link), and it was worth the trouble. This lemon and curry leaf rice has an oriental flavour. It is lovely with an Arabic/Israeli salad and homemade hummus. I will post both these recipes during the week.

The quantities in the recipe here are for 2 people. It is ready in 90 minutes or so.

Ingredients

• 1 cup of brown rice
• 2 cinnamon sticks
• 5 cloves
• Peel of half a lemon + 1 tablespoon of the juice
• 18 dried curry leaves
• ½ teaspoon of salt
• ¼ teaspoon of pepper
• 1 ¼ cups of water
• 1 tablespoon of unsalted butter

Preparation

Rinse the brown rice several times and soak it for 30 minutes in fresh water. Drain well and set aside.

Preheat the oven at 200 degrees Celsius.

In a small saucepan over high heat, add the cinnamon sticks, cloves, lemon peel, curry leaves, salt and pepper, and cover with 1 ¼ cups of water. Bring to a boil, and remove from the heat.

Spread the rice on an oven dish (I use one from Ikea which is 32 cm x 22 cm), pour over the water and spices mixture, and stir well. Line a parchment paper over the rice, and cover the oven dish with foil.

Cook in the oven for 40 minutes. Remove from the oven, and let it sit covered for an extra 10 minutes.

Before serving: in a small saucepan over medium heat, melt the butter completely, remove from the heat, and stir in the lemon juice. Uncover the rice, remove (or leave for decoration) the cinnamon sticks and curry leaves, sprinkle the butter lemon mixture on the rice, and fluff with a fork. And serve!