Meatless Pilaf with Vegetables and Fruit

Name: Meatless Pilaf with Vegetables, Pineapple and Cashews
Prep time: 30 min
Cook time: 1 h
Total time: 1 h 30 min
Cuisine: Middle Eastern
Ingredients: Basmati rice 350 g; Water or stock about 4 cups (twice the rice by volume) (800 ml); Vegetable oil 50 ml; Cashews 75 g; Carrot 1; Bell pepper 2; Canned pineapple 6-8 rings; Seedless grapes 1 sprig; Sweet paprika 0.5 tsp; Salt, black pepper to taste; Saffron or marigold petals for color; Fresh chili pepper, dried herbs (oregano, basil, savory), pineapple syrup optional

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1 h 30 mins

I often make a meatless pilaf as a side dish. It goes beautifully with most meat dishes, fried chicken, roast rabbit or duck. Grain sides pair better than anything with mains like these. We make it as an alternative to plain boiled rice. On top of that, we add fried vegetables, nuts, grapes and slices of tropical fruit.

The base of the dishes called pilaf or pilav is cooked rice. In rare cases it can be another grain, such as bulgur, barley, or even tiny pasta. The main quality of the grain here is that it must be fluffy. The grains should separate easily from one another and be as little sticky as possible. Though, if you think about it, in the Caucasus you sometimes come across dense grain dishes cooked in a similar way, for example shilaplavi.

In Eastern pilafs, the fluffiness of the rice comes from choosing particular varieties and from adding a good amount of animal or vegetable fat, which keeps the grains from sticking together. Books say that the correct name for the way rice is cooked is steaming in absorbed liquid. Most often the properties of the grain are well known, so it is very easy to keep the proportions of grain and liquid right and get fluffy rice rather than a sticky porridge.

In many languages of the East, pilaf simply means cooked rice. It is made in two stages. The first is boiling: the grains absorb moisture and become soft. The second, very important stage is steaming. It is in this second stage that the rice becomes as loose as possible and the grains separate from one another. Depending on how much liquid was absorbed, the time can vary considerably.

Round, sticky rice will not work for pilaf. Good results come from varieties you can easily find in shops. One is parboiled rice, sold labeled “steamed”, and the other is basmati, a very aromatic rice with a thin, long grain.

If you like, you can cook the grain part and the addition (with or without meat) separately. At the very end they are mixed and steamed together. This is acceptable and very common. If you can, it is better to add the rice to the prepared additions and cook everything together until done. What matters is that ingredients that need little heat are added at the very end, to an almost finished dish.

Ingredients

4 servings

Basmati rice 350 g
Water or stock about 4 cups (twice the rice by volume) (800 ml)
Vegetable oil 50 ml
Cashews 75 g
Carrot 1
Bell pepper 2
Canned pineapple 6-8 rings
Seedless grapes 1 sprig
Sweet paprika 0.5 tsp
Salt, black pepper to taste
Saffron or marigold petals for color
Fresh chili pepper, dried herbs (oregano, basil, savory), pineapple syrup optional

Step-by-step recipe

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Preparation

Prepare all the ingredients in advance: meatless pilaf cooks fairly quickly. You can use fresh or canned pineapple. We bought a small can of rings in syrup. If you like, you can add slices of mango or other sweet-and-sour tropical fruit. By the way, if you want the dish to be slightly sweet, do not drain the syrup, since you can add it to the pilaf.

Frying the vegetables and nuts

Fry the carrot until soft. Heat the vegetable oil over high heat in a large frying pan or Chinese wok. Odorless sunflower oil is best. Peel the carrot, dice it and fry until soft and starting to turn golden. Incidentally, carrot root contains a lot of sugars, which caramelize when fried.
Add the bell pepper and fry for 4-5 mins. Remove the seeds and stem from the pepper and cut it into large slices. If you want the meatless pilaf slightly spicy, which is also delicious, add a little finely chopped fresh chili. Reduce the heat to medium and fry the carrot and pepper for 4-5 mins, stirring. In that time the pepper softens and begins to show signs of browning.
Add the nuts to the vegetables and fry everything together until the vegetables begin to lose moisture. Cashews can be used roasted or raw, and they need no preparation beforehand. Besides cashews, hazelnuts, pine nuts or almonds work well. Almonds are better blanched and peeled first.

Cooking the rice

Add the spices and rice. Salt and pepper the vegetables and add 0.5 tsp of sweet paprika, preferably coarsely ground. If you like, you can add a little dried aromatic herbs typical of Mediterranean cuisines: oregano, basil, savory and so on. To give the rice a pleasant yellow-orange color, add saffron or a substitute such as marigold petals.
Add the rice to the fried vegetables and stir well. We used aromatic basmati rice. As a rule, high-quality rice does not need rinsing: it is well polished and free of rice flour.
Pour the liquid (about 4 cups) over the vegetables and rice, bring to a boil and cover the pan with a lid. For basmati rice we usually add 1.5 cups of water (300 ml) per 1 cup of rice (180 g). When making meatless pilaf we increase the ratio to roughly 1:2, allowing for the steaming of the nearly finished dish. You can use chicken or vegetable stock if you have it. Part of the liquid can be replaced with the syrup from the can of pineapple, if you like.
Cook the pilaf covered over the lowest heat. It should literally simmer, and many people believe rice should be stewed rather than boiled. Gradually the grains absorb all the liquid, which takes about 15 mins. By the time all the liquid is absorbed, the rice should be almost done, literally al dente, as in vegetable risotto.
Add the fruit and steam the pilaf for 30 mins. Cut the pineapple rings into 6-8 pieces, since they should not be large. Pull the grapes off their stems and throw out any spoiled or unripe ones. Add the fruit to the meatless pilaf and stir. This is the start of the second stage, steaming. Leave the covered pan on the lowest heat you can manage (electric stoves sometimes have a warming zone). Or simply take the pan off the heat, wrap it in a warm blanket and let the rice sit for half an hour.
Steaming is an important stage. After cooking, the rice grains are slightly sticky and can clump together. Steaming separates them, and the rice becomes not just fluffy but truly loose. Even with a good amount of fat, you can simply shake it out of the pan. Because of the saffron or marigold petals, the rice takes on a pleasant yellowish tint.

Serving

Transfer the pilaf to large plates and serve as a dish on its own. The finished meatless pilaf is very aromatic, the rice grains are practically dry, and the vegetables are well fried and slightly sweet. If you use the pilaf as a side dish, put a piece of baked chicken or a cutlet on top of the side.
If you like, you can replace the rice with bulgur. Frankly, we often eat bulgur, since we like it more and it has fewer calories. It is even easier to get it fluffy because it contains no gluten. A decent result can also be had with ordinary pearl barley.

Calories and macros

630 kcal

Serving ≈ 460 g

Protein11 g7% of kcal
Fat21 g30% of kcal
Carbs98 g63% of kcal

100 g136 kcalProtein 2.4 gFat 4.5 gCarbs 21.2 g

Calculated from the recipe ingredients, excluding salt and spices. Data: USDA and Matvaretabellen.

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