Aromatic Pepper Rice

Shane and I have become a little bored and uninspired by food recently, we blame the heat and lack of desire to stand in over the stove in this weather.

Being someone who loves to both cook and eat I have been determined to get out of this phase!

I've been scrolling through our Instagram page and spending my spare time just reading through recipe books, not reading to meal plan, just reading to relax and inspire. My boss has also recently lent me one of her slimming world cook books and in it we found a recipe for Aromatic Pepper Rice with Tiger Prawns. Oh My God, it was just the kick up the backside my taste buds needed to get the creative juices flowing again.

As I was eating the meal, and picking out all the different spices we had one by one added to the pan, I was one by one thinking of ways to tweak this dish. 

The very next day we recreated the dish with our own stamp. We swapped out the prawns for lamb (our favourtie meat) and tweaked the spices to suit accordingly. 

For two people;

Ingredients 

• Low calorie cooking spray (I like coconut spray)
• 1/2 onion finely chopped
• 2 cardamon pods lightly crushed
• 1/4 tsp turmeric
• 1/2 tsp hot curry powder
• 1 star anise (snapped in two, or two small ones)
• 2 chillies
• 2 small cinnamon sticks
• 140g dried basmati rice
• 225ml boiling lamb or vegetable stock
• 2 bay leaves
• 150g green beans, trimmed and halved
• 200g mild peppadew peppers, drained and roughly chopped
• salt and pepper
• 2 hard boiled eggs
• 200g diced lamb 

• First thing first, which I always forget, hard boil two eggs, and set aside to cool. 
• Spray a medium sized frying pan with low calorie cooking spray and place over a medium heat, once the pan has heated up add the lamb, 1 cardamon pod, 1/4 tsp on hot curry powder, 1/2 the star anise, 1 whole or diced chilies (if you leave it whole you can take it out at the end) and 1 cinnamon stick. Once the meat has brown add enough of the stock to cover the base of the pan, just enough to keep the lamb from going dry -approx 2 tbsp and cook on a low heat stirring occasional. 
• Whilst the lamb is cooking, spray a wide heavy based lidded sauce pan or frying pan with low calorie cooking spray and place over a medium heat, add the onion and cook for five minutes or until soft. Then add the remaining cardamon pod, turmeric, curry powder, star anise, cinnamon stick and chili then cook for 1 minute. Don't forget to keep an eye on the lamb!
• Stir the rice into the onions and spices and stir for one minute to coat with the spices, add the stock bay leaves, green beans and peppadew peppers and season to taste. Bring to the boil over a high heat, stir once and then cover and cook over a low heat for 12 minutes. 
• By this point your lamb should be cooked and you can take off the heat and leave in the pan for the meantime.
• Peel and roughly chop, or halved, your boiled eggs.
• Once the 12 minutes is up for your rice pan, uncover the rice and discard of the bay leaves, star anise, cinnamon stick, chilli and cardamon - if you can find them! No worries if not, just remember not to eat them if you see them on your plate, they have interesting textures! Add the lamb to the dish then re cover for 3-4 minutes or until the lamb is heated through (hopefully it won't have cooled too much!).
• After you have plated up the rice mixture place you egg halves, or scatter your chopped pieces over the top. Alternatively, if you would like these warmed through you can add them with the lamb to the rice pan. 

This dish does require mutli tasking, and is much easier as a two man job. There are lots of ingredients involved, but ones i'll always have in my pantry and love to cook with. Although this is quite a light dish and acceptable as a summer meal in my eyes, it also bring a lovely warming smell to the house which would suit any slightly cold autumn evening. 

I was so excited for the lamb dish it didn't occurred to me to take a photo, but here's one of the original prawn dish we did.

♥