2003-02-14 - 7:37 p.m.
this is good if you are a vegetarian, and also good if you are not. if you're not, still use the fake sausage, cause greasy rice is nasty as hell.
SOME KIND OF RICE
1 cup of basmati rice
3 meatless sausage patties
olive oil
cumin seeds
big metal spoon or ladle
first, prepare the rice according to the package directions. (i recommend using a t-fal pot, since rice likes to stick to the bottom of pans, and nothing ever sticks to t-fal.)
in a skillet, pour a couple tablespoons of olive oil, and start cooking the sausage patties. cook them just long enough that they are not frozen, and you can cut them in half with a spatula. turn off the heat. (this is important, since veggie sausage is really easy to burn.) attack the sausage with the spatula until it looks like ground beef. the more you chop it up the better. turn the heat back on (medium heat), and brown the sausage the rest of the way so it is nice and brown. if you have problems with it sticking and/or starting to burn, put a little more olive oil in the pan and turn the heat down a smidge.
put a teaspoon of olive oil in the ladle or spoon or whatever you opted to use. add 3/4 teaspoon of cumin seed (or more if you feel like it. just not a whole lot, cause that can make things nasty.) turn a burner on your stove all the way up, and hold the sppon or ladle (with the oil and cumin seeds) over it until the oil starts bubbling and the cumin seeds start getting darker-colored. (this will take 20-30 seconds. don't burn the seeds.)
dump the ladle with the oil and seeds into the rice, and dump the ground-up cooked sausage in the rice, too. stir it all up until everything is evenly distributed in the rice. (stir it well, or you will be sad when you go to eat your leftovers and you get a bowl that has a big lump of unseasoned, unsausaged rice)
ta-da! this is super-easy to make, and it doubles well if you are rice-crazy like i am. i bet you could add spinach or lentils or some other kind of veggie to it ,too, although i have never tried. it is also just as good after you put it in the fridge and warm it up, which you can't say about too many foods.
-natalie