Hi people. I found my new favourite rice recipe. Yes, rice. The beautiful thing is, that there is more than just white rice. This recipe is about the purple rice, which has basically a black colour, but it turns into deep purple when cooked. The bran doesn’t give only the purple colour but also the nutty flavour.
This dish is healthy, visually amazing and vegan. The purple rice contains a lot of vitamin E and antioxidants. In order to give some contrast to the purple, I used some green peas and orange carrots. If you would like a brighter purple colour, combine some white rice with the purple one.
Ingredients for 2 portions of purple rice with peas and carrots:
- 160 g of purple rice
- 3 handfuls of green peas (frozen or fresh)
- 2 carrots (big)
- 1 red onion
- 2 tsp of coconut oil
- sea salt
Prepare a large saucepan and a small pot. Wash the carrots, put them in the small pot (without cutting), cover with water and cook for about 10-15 minutes. Try not to overcook them. You want them cooked but firm. Like that they won’t get smashed when mixing into the rice and you can make nice carrot flowers like I did. So, leave the carrots whole (unless you want cubes). If they don’t fit the pot, cut them crosswise in half.
Once the carrots are ready, put them on a cutting board and cut in ca 1 cm thick circles. Furthermore, using a cookie or fondant cutter cut out some nice flowers or hearts. I used a simple small fondant flower cutter. And of course, I used also the pieces of carrots where the flower was cut out. They are all very cute and decorative and most of all they are food.
After you cut everything, carefully place the carrot pieces back into the pot and cover to keep warm.
Next, put the coconut oil in the saucepan. Clean and thinly chop the onion. Put the rice in a sieve and rinse it under cold running water. Let it drain. Then, turn the stove on and once the oil starts melting add the onion and rice to the pan with continuous stirring. After a minute, pour in some warm water. The ration between rice and water should be 1:2. I have the opinion that less water is always better than too much. But you can still add more if needed.
Season and cook on medium heat for 15-20 minutes or until the water has evaporated. Then remove the pan from the stove and leave it covered for 5-10 minutes, in order to let the rice absorb all of the remaining liquids. At halftime, stir in the frozen green peas. You can also add the carrots now or add them later like I did.
Finally, serve the purple rice with green peas topped with “carrot flowers”.
Enjoy!
