I absolutely Love rice and all rice dishes. ( Well, almost all, for some reason I don’t care for Jasmine Rice) This one is a variation on a recipe I saw in Cuisine magazine. Since I had a nice zucchini in the fridge, I decided to tweek their recipe and I hope you’ll like it as well. This works great is you have some leftover plain rice as well. Just add the cooked rice to the other ingredients at the end and warm through for about 2 minutes.
Ingredients:
- 2 Tbsp Canola Oil
- 2 Tbsp Extra Virgin Olive Oil ( I used Light)
- ¼ cup minced Shallots
- 1 medium sized green Zucchini- peeled, cut into ¼ inch circles and then quarter those into triangle cuts
- ¾ cups Long Grain White rice, Brown rice or any type except wild.
- ¼ cup Raisins- I had regular sweet raisins, but golden works fine too
- ¼ cup Shredded Fresh Carrot
- ¼ teas Salt
- Dash of freshly ground Black Pepper
- 1 & 1/2 cups Chicken Broth–Gluten-free of course!
- ¼ cup Diced Fresh Parsley leaves
- ½ teas Zest of a lemon
- 1 tbsp. Lemon Juice
Place the 2 types of oil in a skillet and heat briefly. After peeling and slicing the zucchini and shallots, add to the oils and saute until the vegetable is just getting soft and before the shallots get brown. Add the broth and raw rice. Cook with a lid on for 5 minutes. Stir in the raisins, carrot, salt and pepper, & the zest. Simmer on low heat until rice has absorbed the broth but not too dry. (All rices cook at different lengths of time, so naming a precise time of cooking is difficult.) Watch until you see that happen. Remove from heat and add the lemon juice and parsley, tossing gently.
Note: If you are preparing with already pre-cooked rice, then merely simmer the zucchini and shallots in the broth for about 2 minutes. Add the remaining ingredients with your cooked rice, and heat for another 2 minutes to absorb the flavors.
