Rice Salad Recipe

This salad — a combination of brown rice, crunchy vegetables, roasted cashews and an Asian-style soy dressing — could be served as a side dish or a light meal.

Preparation time: about 20 minutes (excludes boiling and cooling times)

Yields about 6 cups.

We use a 20ml tablespoon and 250ml measuring cup for all of our recipes.

220g (1 cup) medium grain brown rice
6g (about 1 medium) garlic clove, peeled
30ml (1 1/2 tablespoons) peanut oil (or other mild-flavoured oil)
10g (2 teaspoons) white sugar
60ml (3 tablespoons) white vinegar
30ml (1 1/2 tablespoons) soy sauce
6g (1 1/2 teaspoons) finely chopped red chilli (adjust the amount according to taste)
110g (about 1 medium) Lebanese cucumber
120g (about 1/2 large) deseeded red capsicum
100g (about 17) snow peas
40g (about 3 small) green onions (green shallots)
130g (about 1 small) carrot
100g (2/3 cup) roasted unsalted cashews

Bring a large saucepan of water to the boil. Add rice and garlic to the boiling water and stir briefly to prevent the rice from sticking to the bottom of the saucepan. Cook garlic for two minutes, until slightly softened. Remove the garlic from the saucepan and finely chop. Continue cooking rice until tender, about a further 28 minutes.

Place garlic in a bowl large enough to hold all of the salad ingredients. Add the peanut oil, sugar, vinegar, soy sauce and chilli to the bowl and stir until the sugar has dissolved. © exclusivelyfood.com.au

When the rice is cooked, pour into a colander, briefly rinse rice under running water to separate grains then drain well. While still hot, add to the bowl with the dressing. Stir to coat the rice with the dressing.

Cover bowl and refrigerate until rice is cold (about 45 minutes); the vegetables might lose some of their crunch if added to warm rice. During the cooling time, stir the rice a couple of times to distribute the dressing.

Finely dice the cucumber and capsicum. Remove the stem end from each snow pea and peel away any strings running down the lengths of the peas. Thinly slice the snow peas. Finely slice the green onions. Peel and grate the carrot. Roughly chop the cashews.

If you weren't able to weigh the vegetables before starting, the approximate cup measurements are 3/4 cup diced cucumber, 3/4 cup diced capsicum, 3/4 cup sliced snow peas, 1/3 cup sliced green onions and 1 cup grated carrot.

When the rice is cold, add the cucumber, capsicum, snow peas, green onions, carrot and cashews to the bowl.

Gently stir or toss the ingredients to combine. The salad can be served immediately or covered and refrigerated until required. © www.exclusivelyfood.com.au