Dill Rice

I've been making this on and off for a while and was sure I had included it on feast with bron. Then last week I bought a big bunch of dill, some of which I used to flavour the pork roast and some of which I planned to use making dill rice. Only, when I looked, the recipe wasn't on here. Disaster! I use this blog as my recipe store - or one of them, I have gazillions at home and another gazillion saved on the hard drive - and often and refer back to them. In fact, if I lost this site not sure what we'd be eating.

Anyway, I googled and came up with lots of persian dill rice recipes - some of which sounded very nice - but it wasn't this one. And I really wanted this one. Finally, after trying a few different variations on the request I found it again on rice gourmet. Any time you need a little inspiration for a rice dish, this is the place to go. They love the stuff.

Dill Rice

1 cup (7oz/200) rice

3 tbspn oil

4 cloves

½-1 green chilli, finely chopped (optional)

1/3 cup fresh dill, finely chopped

1 cup of frozen green peas

salt

Soak the rice for 15 minutes. Wash well and drain.

Heat the oil in a pot and fry the cloves and chilli. Add the peas, dill and rice and saute for 1 minute

Add salt to taste (about 1 teaspoon) and 13/4 cups boiling water, and cook for 9-10 minutes until the rice is perfectly cooked.

It is very quick and easy to prepare. The finished dish has interesting flavours, the cool dill balances the little prickle of heat from the chilli and the cloves adds an interesting background note. We had it with a spiced mutton stew, which it complemented perfectly, but it would also make a simple central dish on a hot day (like we see any of those !) with just some cucumber raita and warm naan.