Not long after moving up to Loughborough, we purchased a microwave oven. It wasn’t our first but it was the first one we’d had for quite a while and so I scoured the local library looking for books on microwave cooking. Alas, that was to no avail. We’ve still got the same microwave but it mainly gets used for reheating and defrosting duties.

Recently though, I spotted Ping! by Justine Pattison, which was just the kind of tome I had been looking for. I checked it out and tried one of the recipes last night – the “Spanish-style Vegetable Pilaf” (p. 125). You start by cooking chopped onion (1 medium) and garlic (2 cloves) in tbsp olive oil in a large covered dish on high for 4 minutes (assuming a 1000W oven), stirring halfway through. Next, you stir in 200g basmati rice along with paprika, saffron, salt and pepper, topping off with 500ml stock, ensuring the rice is submerged. On the top, you add further vegetables. The recipe has 175g chargrilled artichokes, 175g roasted peppers and 85g pitted kalamata olives; I used a couple of capsicum peppers, some broad beans and some black olives as that was what I had. That gets covered and cooked for 10 minutes. I’m not sure how you check the rice is tender while leaving covered for a further 5 minutes so I just relied on seeing that there wasn’t much liquid left sloshing around. Finally it is served up with optional additions of lemon and parsley.

It did well for last night’s meal and, with the addition of some prawns, for tonight as well. It is a pretty easy method for making a pretty decent meal and one that I’ll certainly try again. I might also see if I can try out some of the other recipes before it goes back.