Sweet Potato Rice Pilaf

Step 1

Preheat the oven to 180C / 360F.

Step 2

Prepare your sweet potatoes and onions. Peel and cube the sweet potatoes and scatter in an oiled medium sized baking dish. Slice the onions into half rounds and add to the pan - don't separate them into individual slices, let them stick in their half moons as much as possible (this will mean they take longer to cook, and stay in synch with the sweet potatoes). You want the pan fairly full - not so much that the sweet potatoes and onions overlap, there should be a little space around them, but not a lot. If everything is too spaced out, the onions are likely to burn.Spray or drizzle with olive oil, add salt and pepper, and place in the oven for 35-40 minutes.

Step 3

If you are cooking brown rice, start that off immediately. If you are cooking white rice, you can wait until the oven's halfway mark.For this recipe, I like to cook my rice like pasta: Don't worry about measurements, just fill a medium-large saucepan with salted water and bring it to a boil, then add the rice to the water. Allow it to cook for 25-30 minutes for long grain brown rice or 8-10 minutes for long grain white rice. Be sure to taste test as you go. Once it's ready, drain it in a sieve (the kind you use for icing sugar!), shaking it a little to get all the water out. If the sweet potatoes aren't ready yet, return the rice to the pan and add a little drizzle of olive oil or a pat of butter. Allow to sit, covered, until the sweet potato is done.

Step 4

Once the sweet potatoes are tender and browning around the edges and the onions are browned and starting to crisp, remove from the oven.Sprinkle in the spices and mix through to get all of the sweet potatoes well coated. Assess how oily the pan is - if there's a little layer of olive oil on the bottom, we're fine. If it's a little dried out, let's add a little pour of oil or a big pat of butter now. (A nice layer of oil or butter will help distribute lots of flavor once we add the rice.) Place back in the oven for about a minute, just to bring out the flavor of the spices.

Step 5

Now add the rice to the pan with the sweet potatoes and mix through. We want to get all of the rice coated with the spiced oil / butter in the pan. Add additional salt and pepper to taste.

Step 6

Time for the finishing touches. Mix the chopped cilantro through the pan, and drizzle with a little lemon.

Step 7

Serve. You can serve this directly from the baking dish, or pour into a serving dish. Enjoy!