The cookbook we got for Christmas, British chef Jamie Oliver’s “5 Ingredients,” has some interesting ingredients and in the case of sheet pan-like recipes, an interesting choice of preparation dishes.
It’s kind of like that Eddie Izzard joke about the difference between American English and British English, only less funny. But it is fun to suss out the differences in British cuisine and American, and sometimes challenging.
Mostly in the US it’s getting easier to find the ingredients (yay rogan josh curry!) or find substitutes (no double cream, no problem, just mix sour cream with cream). But I’ll admit I’ve been kind of stumped by his use of a “roasting tray.”
It seems quite a bit like a rimmed sheet pan, but as with this week’s recipe, it calls for cooking ingredients on the stove in the tray before baking. As far as I know my sheet pan shouldn’t be used the same and I wasn’t willing to risk ruining my main shtick to test it out.
Given this difference between British cooking and American cooking, I’m not sure it made a ton of sense to prepare this week’s meal on a sheet pan, but part of me just wanted to prove that it was possible to do it.
See, it was baked saffron rice, and I’ve never baked rice and wanted to see if it worked.
It maybe wasn’t practical but it did work and made a nice side dish for some lamb kofta. And because it wasn’t made like normal rice, it had a little more texture.
All in all, I think it was pretty worth it. And since it was only 5 ingredients (plus some pantry items), it was pretty easy. And tasty!
Here’s what I did:
Ingredients
- 2 medium red onions, or 1 large
- 2 pinches of saffron
- 1 (5.3 oz.) container plain yogurt
- 1 (2.8 oz.) tube of sun-dried tomato paste
- 1 ⅓ to 1 ½ c. white basmati rice (it actually calls for 300 grams, and I have a scale so I measured 300 grams, but for those that don’t, the Internet gave me a cup equivalent)
- 1 to 2 T. olive oil
- 2 ½ c. boiling water (again, this is 600 milliliters, which should be on a measuring cup, but just in case, this is the conversion)
- Salt and pepper, to taste
Directions
Heat oven to 400 degrees.
Chop the onions, and fry with olive oil in a large pan for about 4 minutes. Meanwhile, place half the saffron in the boiling water. In a small bowl, cover the remaining saffron with 1 T. boiling water, steep for a short while (he recommends 10 seconds, I did mine for minutes) and then mix it with the yogurt. Set aside the yogurt mix.
Once the onions are ready, stir in the tomato paste, rice, salt and pepper, and then pour on the saffron water. Bring to a boil, and then transfer to a large rimmed sheet pan (about 15 inches by 12 inches). Bake rice in the oven for about 15 to 20 minutes, or until the rice has absorbed the water and fluffed up.
Spoon the yogurt mixture onto the rice, and enjoy!