A bowl of brown rice

These days I rarely buy white rice. I can remember finding brown rice quite off-putting, as if it was some extreme of of health-foodism (I certaibly wouldn't have bought brown pasta then either.) Now I love the  nuttiness and flavour of brown rice, even if the extra cooking time can be a pain - and even my five-year-old nephew likes it. This recipe is for a sustaining, soothing bowl of brown rice, turned into a complete meal.

(The comments above, by the way, apply to long grain rice - I do buy risotto and pudding rice, which understandably don't come in brown)

I particularly love brown basmati rice, which also has the hint of fragrance that you get from white basmati rice.  It's based on Nigel Slater's recipe, with a few tweaks.

Ingredients

50g/ 2oz cashew nuts
1 onion
1 tsp vegetable oil
3 medium carrots
200g/ 7oz brown rice (basmati if possible)
500ml vegetable stock or water
2 bay leaves
1 tsp nigella seeds
1 tsp garam masala


Method

Start by toasting the cashew nuts either in the oven for a few minutes, or in a dry frying pan over a moderate heat, tossing them a couple of times so that they brown.

Chop the onion quite small. Heat the oil in a large saucepan and add the onion. Cook it over a moderate heat for five minutes, stirring now and then, until tinged with gold. Peel or scrub the carrots, cut them into dice and add those to the onions with the garam masala and half the nigella seeds. Cook for a further two minutes.

Rinse the rice and add to the pan with the vegetable stock or water and the bay leaves. Cook for 20 minutes with a lid on, then turn off the heat and leave to sit, covered, for 10 minutes. Serve with the cashew nuts and the nigella seeds sprinkled over.