Week 4: Curried Rice with Spinach

The book: 101 One-Pot Dishes (BBC Good Food)

The recipe: p140, "Curried Rice with Spinach"

These recipe names really don't do themselves any favours, do they? Then again, the pocket-book BBC Good Food series is meant to be about simplicity, especially where 101 One-Pot Dishes is concerned (the clue's in the name, I suppose).

I'm still rather less than enamoured by the prospect of this one, though, particularly since the recipes either side of p140 look somewhat more promising - though even they labour under the names "Bean and Vegetable Chilli" and "Vegetable Casserole with Dumplings", so pragmatism is evidently the order of the day in the BBC Good Food offices.

And besides, that's not how random number generation works, is it?

Fine, then. "Curried Rice with Spinach" it is. Be still, my beating heart.

The prep: Actually, I'm not kidding when I say the recipe does itself a disservice with that name. There's all kinds of tasty morsels involved here - chickpeas, raisins, cashew nuts - so to reduce the dish to a mere "Curried Rice with Spinach" would seem to be all brevity and no wit.

Moreover, there's very little I need to buy in here, which is a definite win. The recipe calls for "medium curry paste" then promptly recommends Madras, which doesn't meet the definition of "medium" in my book. Regardless, I decide to take advantage of the cracking Sri Lankan shops out on Loampit Hill and avail myself of a jar of Kashmiri Masala paste (which is essentially your standard hottish curry paste but with added paprika for awesome fierce redness). I also go for fresh rather than frozen spinach because, well, it's better.

The making: Garlic and the curry paste are fried in oil for a minute, then rinsed basmati rice, a drained tin of chickpeas, a handful of raisins and a Pyrex-jug's-worth of vegetable stock are added, stirred and simmered for 12-15 minutes. No onion, which is a bit unusual for a curry dish, though I suppose that's covered by the paste to some extent.

I make the mistake of nipping upstairs for a couple of minutes and come back to find that, even at a desperately low simmer, the water has already been all but fully absorbed and the pan is in imminent danger of Death By Burnt-On Rice. A quick rescue operation follows and all is well (though I do end up using about twice as much water as the recipe calls for and still the rice doesn't end up overly claggy, so my ingredient accuracy scepticism antennae are twitching like crazy at this point).

The spinach and a handful of chopped cashew nuts are added and gently stirred until the spinach is wilted, then yoghurt is added to taste (if you're using Kashmiri Masala and you're a wuss like me, "to taste" means "quite a bit, then"). And that's it! Introducing one substantial and largely unphotogenic dish of Curried Blah with Blah:

The eating: Allow me, if I may, to quote directly from the top of p140: "Warming and tasty, practically no preparation, superhealthy, uses storecupboard ingredients - one-pot dishes don't get better than this."

I'd dispute two things here: the audacious closing claim and, worse still, the idea that the single-word usage of "storecupboard" is in any way acceptable, no matter how many recipe websites seem to believe it is.

Still, I can't really argue with the results: this is a warming and tasty dish (with minimal washing-up required afterwards), offering a pleasing texture and a nice blend of spice and sweetness thanks to the raisins and nuts. Even Sam, no fan of either ingredient, describes it as "surprisingly nice", though that might be because I'd lowered his expectations sufficiently with advance warnings of potential dullness.

And I mean, it is kind of dull, but it's also an appropriately wintry warmer of a dish and exactly the kind of thing I'd happily make as an easy midweek dinner with or without the inspiration of this blog, so at least the random fairies have been quite sensible in that respect.

Though I'd probably throw in some meat next time, because I'm a savage like that.

One-word verdict: Hearty.