Thursday, August 26, 2010

Rice and salad



Tonight's dinner was a "throw a bunch of stuff in a pot" rice and salad from whatever I had.

Normally, my "throw a bunch of stuff into a pan" dinner is pasta. Which was my plan. Then I realized that I must have been eating a lot of pasta. Because I am almost out. So I decided on rice.

I have a pressure cooker, so I figured that I could cook flavored brown rice in the same time that it would take to make skillet pasta. I spent about 10 mins web-surfing for guidance, then just decided to wing it. My one problem with rice and my pressure cooker is that the bottom layer burns. It didn't use to. Now it does. Anyone else have this problem and fix it?

It's not very pretty. But it did taste very good.

Marinara rice
1 Tbsp canola oil
a bunch of small onions, sliced (like green onion sized)
1 zucchini, diced
tsp Italian seasoning (I make my own)
1/2 basket cherry tomatoes, sliced in half
the last 4 meatballs from the freezer
1.5 cups rice
1 25-oz jar Trader Joe's vodka sauce. This was free. Or $10. I won a bag of TJ's goodies at the wine tasting benefit. I paid $10 for the ticket. I've never had this sauce, but it was pretty good. There was lots of other good stuff in the bag. Like tiny peanut butter cups.
Water to make 3 cups total liquid (vodka sauce + water) = 3 cups

Saute onion and zucchini in oil until soft. Add seasoning and rice and meatballs and cherry tomatoes, and cook until tomatoes are softened. Add sauce and water (remember, 3 cups total!), cover, and bring to pressure.

Reduce heat to maintain pressure, and cook 20 mins. Turn off heat, let pressure reduce 5 min, use quick release. If it's too soupy (mine was), cover again for 5 more min.

I topped it with some cheese. Next time: maybe 1/2 cup less liquid. All in all, I prefer my rice dishes where I cook the rice ahead of time. It's fluffier. But this is much faster when I haven't planned dinner.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I've never used a pressure cooker for rice. We have an electric stove (which I can't stand) so my rice was always burned on the bottom.

Until I bought a small ($7!) rice maker from Walgreen's pharmacy of all places - just set it and walk away - perfect every time - and it does just about any grain - brown rice, quinoa :D

Hope you have a great weekend!