Baked rice isn’t a particularly novel concept. But for whatever reason this version from the Ottolenghi team’s weekly column in The Guardian really captured my heart.
It’s easy enough to remix this with different spicing. Using roasted or confit garlic and swapping out the cinnamon gives it a different kind of depth. I’ve also been known to skip the pine nut butter when I’m in a rush on a weeknight without the world ending.
This is also easy enough to scale up and down. I budget a shade over 50 g of uncooked rice per person, so this serves about four people with some buffer if anyone’s extra hungry. Scaling down, I would make sure to switch to a smaller baking dish.
Ingredients
For the rice
- 500 g leeks, trimmed, cut into 1.5 cm rounds
- 4 shallots, peeled, sliced into 1 cm rounds
- 6 spring onions, white parts cut into 1 cm slices, green parts thinly sliced on a bias reserved for garnish
- 1 cinnamon stick
- 2 bay leaves
- Olive oil
- Salt
- 3 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
- 2.5 teaspoons cumin seeds, toasted
- 250 g basmati rice
- 500 g boiling water
For the butter
- 50 g unsalted butter
- 2 bay leaves
- 2 pine nuts
Method
For the butter
Place the butter and bay in a small saucepan. Heat the mixture to melt the butter, and then continue cooking until the butter just begins to brown and has a nutty aroma. This happens around 120 °C. Then lower the heat, add the pine nuts, and let them just brown in the hot butter.
Pour the finished butter into a jug to stop the cooking.
For the rice
Preheat an oven to 240 °C (475 °F).
Pour the leeks, shallots, spring onions, cinnamon, and bay into a large baking dish. Toss generously with olive oil and salt to taste. Cover the dish tightly with foil and place it into the preheated oven. Roast the vegetables until they’re very soft and beginning to char, about 40 minutes.
Then, remove the foil, and add the garlic, cumin seeds, rice, and boiling water. Replace the foil over the dish, and bake the rice until the water has been absorbed, about 20 to 30 minutes. When the rice is cooked, remove the dish from the oven and let it steam for a further 15 minutes, still covered. Fluff the rice with a fork, garnish with the spring onion greens, and drizzle over the pine nut butter.