Rice NO duck

Rice with duck is a very traditional Portuguese dish that can be found in pretty much most typical restaurants across the country. How weird is the following: people can one minute go and feed bits of bread to the ducks and swans in the ponds, show their children how lovely they are, swimming and making funny noises, and then have them corpses shredded for lunch? And the same goes for so many other animals…. just something to think about.

Anyway, NO duck rice is a lovely, flavoursome dish, with hidden veggies for the fussy ones 🙂 Easy to make- give it a try!

Time: 50 min approx.

Type: main dish

Difficulty: 1.5 pan

Serves 3-4 people

What you need

Food:

2 tbsp Olive oil

2 white medium onions, finely chopped

2 garlic cloves, finely chopped

1 big carrot, cut into small pieces

2 bay leaves

2 tbsp of nutritional yeast

About 1 L boiling water

300g close cup mushrooms, chopped

1 cup white rice

2 tbsp soya sauce

1 Vegan chorizo (optional; if you live in the UK, the Iceland one is quite good, and is sliced already!)

1 tbsp paprika

1 tsp nutmeg

Salt and pepper to taste

Utensils:

Large pan (with lead)

Knife

Chopping board

Large Baking tray

Directions:

Finely chop the onion and garlic cloves and cut the carrot;

Heat the olive oil in a large pan over a medium-low heat. Gently fry the onion, garlic and carrot for a few minutes, adding the bay leaves. nutmeg and salt too;

Remove pan from heat, take out the bay leaves, and pour mixture into a food processor with 1 cup of boiling water and 2 tbsp of nutritional yeast and blend until you get a smooth sauce;

Pour mixture again onto the pan, as well as sliced mushrooms, rice, paprika and soya sauce;

Add remaining water (about 1.5 cup) and let it cook for about 5 minutes with lead on;

Remove from heat and add sliced chorizo to the mix but set aside about 8 slices for decoration (if not using chorizo, you can use a few fine slices of carrot on top);

Pour mixture into the baking tray (make sure there’s still quite a lot of water) and spread the 8 slices of chorizo on top;

Let it cook for about 20minutes in a pre-heated oven at 180֯ C;

Serve immediately while hot.

NOTE: if you live somewhere where you can buy Linda McCartney shredded ‘duck’, you can use that instead of the mushrooms (or do a mix of both!). If using this meat substitute, I’d fry it for a few minutes in a bit of olive oil and white wine before adding to the rice.