Vegan MoFo Day 22: Seeded Spicy Rice

Often my dinner is a bowl of brown rice with steamed veggies and a lentil sauce of some sort. Usually I have plain steamed rice, but sometimes I really want something more flavourful. This is one of my favourite recipes - tasty, quick to make and using ingredients I usually have at hand. The recipe calls for white basmati rice, but I imagine that any long grain white rice will be fine. I have made it using brown basmati which takes an extra 10 minutes and more water to cook.

Seeded Spicy Basmati Rice 
1 tsp sunflower oil
1/2 tsp ground turmeric
5 cardamom pods, lightly crushed
1 tsp coriander seeds, lightly crushed
3 cloves of garlic, crushed
200 g/1 cup white basmati rice
400 ml/1 2/3 cups vegetable stock
115 g/1/2 cup natural soya yoghurt
1 Tbsp sunflower seeds, toasted
1 Tbsp sesame seeds, toasted
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Fresh coriander leaves (cilantro) to garnish

Heat the oil and gently saute the spices and crushed garlic for 1 minute, stirring continuously. Add the rice and vegetable stock, bring to the boil, cover and turn down to a simmer for around 15 minutes. Stir in the yoghurt and toasted seeds, season to taste and serve garnished with chopped fresh coriander leaves (cilantro).

When I am out of yoghurt, I mix in some almond milk and the juice of half a lemon instead. Today I served this with steamed broccoli, cauliflower, sugarsnaps and brussels sprouts, topped with a lemony lentil dal with some mango chutney on the side.