By Freya Bellin
This dish is wonderfully flavorful, blending sweet-tart apples, nutty brown rice, and spicy coconut curry. As promised, it really is hands-off, and the results are fantastic. By cooking the dry rice before adding liquid it becomes extra nutty, plus it gets well coated with the curry- and ginger-infused oil. The coconut milk is subtle but crucial to the creaminess of the dish, and the shredded coconut adds a nice toasty element throughout. Once mixed in, give the apples some time to soften up—they will cook significantly and taste best when warmed all the way through. You can certainly play around with variations on this recipe, maybe swapping out the apples for raisins or pineapple, or some combination. Try topping it with plain Greek yogurt for extra creaminess.
I did some improvising with the cooking technique in this recipe, and instead of using an oven-proof pan, I cooked everything in a large skillet up until it was ready for the oven. At that point, I transferred it to a small glass Pyrex dish and covered it with aluminum foil. The dish still came out great, so don’t be deterred if you don’t have the right cookware. Recipe from The Food Matters Cookbook.