Spiced Curry Rice

Around 4:45 each night I start warding off hungry children with small bowls of sliced veggies or nuts to munch on until I can get dinner ready, and hopefully hold them off until Papa is home to join us. This means that cooking dinner on a weeknight is usually a quick event consisting of bits of leftover rice or noodles, a bunch of vegetables, or a few dishes I managed to cook ahead on Sunday afternoon. Spiced rice is a great solution for this sort of dinner. For this dish, I was inspired by a recipe from Khadija Gurnah in New Haven Cooks/Cocina New Haven, the community cookbook I developed, and by a great dish served up at Thali Too, a fabulous Indian vegetarian restaurant in New Haven, CT where the use of spices is superb, and everything on the menu is under $10. 

For this rice dish I added tofu and almonds for some protein, and some broccoli for the vegetable part of the meal. The kids and I nibbled on cucumbers, and a few slices of red peppers while dinner was cooking. you can get very creative with additions to this dish. any protein would work well: slices of chicken, beef or shrimp, or even chickpeas could be nice, and peas, peppers, greenbeans, or cauliflower would all be good additions as well.

Spiced Curry Rice

Cooked basmati rice (white or brown)

Curry powder

Extra spices of your choosing (cardamom pods, cumin, corinader, cinnamon, clove, hot pepper, tumeric)

Onion, finely diced

Garlic, minced

Fresh ginger, grated or minced

Tofu, cut in small cubes

Almonds, toasted

Raisins

Broccoli, cut into small floretts

1. In a large high-sided frying pan, sauté onions in a small amount of oil, add garlic and ginger, a pinch of salt and cook until onions are translucent and garlic and ginger are fragrant.
2. Add broccoli and saute for a minute. Add spices and tofu and saute for another minute. Add rice and Raisins and sauté on low heat until rice is warm. You may need to add a sprinkle of water to the pan at this point to make the rice tender if it had been in the refrigerator.
3. Continue stiring the rice gently  over low heat until warmed through. Toss in some almonds, adjust seasoning, and serve. 

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