Kitchen: Spiced Carrot and Chickpea Pilaf

Gosh, this is turning into a food blog lately!  My quest to use-up-all-the-tins-of-chickpeas continues.  Forcing me to be more inventive, I have sought out another winner of a recipe from the excellent Good Food website.

As usual, I 'tweaked' the recipe a little.  I added a good handful of chopped coriander, because I just love fresh herbs in things and I thought it looked a little too orange before this step.  I also added more harissa - it made it really quite spicy, oops!  So I've left the original quantity in the recipe below so you don't suffer the same fate.  I switched olive oil for rapeseed oil also, and used brown basmati rice instead of white.

There are different types of harissa too - this time I used a tube of harissa, like you find tomato puree in, that I found in the 'World Food' aisle of Asda for 75p.  Usually I buy those teeny jars that are about £1.40.  There was definitely a different flavour, I missed the complex, aniseed taste of the jars, this paste was more just pure heat!

This recipe makes quite a lot - there was enough for about 6 people as a side dish, and for 4 people as a main.  I was only cooking for myself, stupidly, so I now have a row of tupperwares in my fridge, I'll be eating this bloomin' pilaf for days!

Ingredients

• 1 tbsp rapeseed oil
• 2 onions, finely chopped
• 3 carrots (about 300g/11oz), coarsely grated
• 2 tbsp harissa
• 300g/ 11oz brown basmati rice, rinsed
• 700ml/ 1¼ pints vegetable stock, made with 1 stock cube (or equivalent)
• 400g can chickpeas, drained
• 25g/ 1oz flaked almonds (I didn't bother toasting them but you can if you want!)

Method

1. Heat the oil in a lidded casserole dish. Add the onions and cook for 8 mins, until soft. Tip in the carrots, harissa and rice and stir for a couple of mins. Pour over the stock, bring to the boil, then cover with the lid and simmer until the rice is nearly cooked (my brown basmati took 22-24 mins, so I simmered for 20 mins before moving on to the next step).
2. Fork through the chickpeas and cook gently for 3-5 mins more, until the grains of rice are tender and all the liquid has been absorbed. Season, add a handful of chopped coriander, turn off the heat, cover and leave to sit for a few mins.
3. Sprinkle the almonds over the rice mixture and serve with a dollop of yogurt.