Monday. 28/09/2015. 'Vegeree Not Kedgeree., Spiced Rice, Veg, Eggs & Yoghurt.'

This recipe comes from 'Everyday Super Food' by Jamie Oliver. Page 38.













From the picture, the dish oozed healthiness from its every ingredient. The recipe belongs to the Breakfast section of the book but is filling enough to be done for dinner time. Beside, it also gave a big bowl of leftover for lunch the following day. 

Book Pic.

For the ingredients, all of them but one are regularly found in our kitchen. The unusual one was the brown basmati rice. If you can find from Arborio rice to Jasmine rice, passing by Camargue red rice in my cupboards, brown basmati was a bit of a novelty to introduce. When you think 'Basmati', you picture a sleek shiny white grain of rice. So I started to rethink and open my mind to a world of goodness, like we did for bread.

The Prep.

The colour of your flour, bread, pasta, rice doesn't represent the level of your income anymore... Those days are gone and dusted, belonging to decades ago. If we go back to centuries, the 'white' story of bread and flour can get very horrid, when eating chalk was as much on the drawing board telling you the price of your bread as inside it. Nowadays, the colour of what you eat is more likely to represent how health conscious you are. How much do you want your food to be tempered with that white ideal, and at what cost? Buying strong flour for making bread today, I saw the label mentioned 'white but non-bleached'. Somehow, I went for that flour against all over on the shelves.

Brown Basmati Rice.

The Brown Basmati rice was used in many recipes this 'Jamie Oliver's Super food' week and went down very well, I would even venture, it was a treat. We will keep using it. 

Coriander.

One ingredient, I used to love to hate in favour of Parsley was Coriander. However, if I still think that the herb doesn't keep well at all in a fridge compared to the good old Parsley, I grew to like it. So if a recipe asks for Coriander, I got Coriander and stopped swapping it for Parsley. This is how I grew to have an appreciation for that herb so much so that I have it on my windowsill next to my curly parsley and flat leaves one. It tends to keep better in pots. One little tip I learnt is to use the stalks as well as leaves especially doing soups and stocks because it add flavours and it does. 

Coriander prepped.

I did amend just a tad the recipe to make it more dinner like than breakfast like. 

Breaking the Shell.

Duck Eggs.

First I swapped the normal chicken eggs for duck eggs, a couple of them just for extra yolkiness. Duck eggs do benefit from that larger yolk which made them perfect for that recipe. Cooking wise, I tend to just add a minute more to get them right. 

Duck Big Yolkers.

Second, to please my very carnivorous alter ego I added 80 g of cubed Chorizo. That paprika sausage did work well with the spiced rice. It wasn't a clash, it was very much a match. 

Cayenne and Lemon Drop Peruvian Chillies.

Third, my approach was different as I didn't cook the rice following the packet instruction like advised by Jamie Oliver's instructions. I treated it like a risotto rice. In a tablespoon of rapeseed oil in my risotto/paella pan (a frying pan resembling a wok but thicker), I coated the rice for a minute, before adding the Chorizo then the chopped Spring Onions (4 instead of 2), fresh ginger, curry powder and two Cayenne Chilli (we have a glut of them this year). Then I fed the vegetable stock in (rather than blend boiling the rice in water) little by little building the Vegeree up with the other ingredients, one at at time, the mushroom, the peas, the tomatoes, etc, etc.

Risotto'ing the dish. 

Chestnut Mushrooms.

Chop-Chop!

This method took much longer than Jamie Oliver's recipe is suppose to take. It almost add an extra 10 to 20 minutes to the original approximate time given in the book. But I must admit that if you have time then it is worth trying it. 

The happy Result.

The flavours of the 'Vegeree', which ended up being a 'Chorizoree', were fantastic. I love Jamie Oliver for is ability to play with recipe and make then fun. But I also have huge respect for his passionate engagement to encourage everyone to eat better. His school meals fight was more than commending.

When I was enthusiastic entering this trial week of healthy super food, my partner had a very worried look on his face. However when he tried that 'Vegeree', he was won over straight away and his concerns flew away. The assumption that healthier meant boring and not delicious vanished in his mind courtesy of one jazzed up Jamie Oliver's recipe. The dish got a five from both of us, and we will do it again.