Raisin and Apricot Pilaf & Green Beans with Walnut Dressing

After checking out my friend's cooking blog I couldn't think of any better way to combine my three biggest passions: cooking, photography and writing. I have been a vegetarian for five years and have had countless people ask me throughout the years "What do you eat?!?" It's time to put the hundreds of recipes I have on

file to use to finally put that question to rest.

As a vegetarian I eat a wide variety of foods and I hope this blog will inspire you to attempt some of the recipes.

Ingredients:
-3 tablespoons oil or butter
-1 onion, chopped
-1 1/2 cups rice
-3 1/2 cups hot water
-salt and pepper
-2 tablespoons fresh parsley, chopped
-2 tablespoons lemon juice
-7 oz dried apricots
-2 tablespoons raisins
-1.8 oz almonds, blanched

In a saucepan heat oil/butter and cook onion until golden.

Add the rice and stir to coat with oil.

Add the hot water, salt, pepper, parsley and lemon juice.
Cover and simmer for 10 minutes.

Stir in apricots, raisins and almonds and simmer for 5 more minutes.

Remove then let stand 5 minutes.

Tada!

This recipe came from the cookbook Vegetarian which is part of the "Complete Series" . The difficulties that arose when I tried to make this dish were that the cooking times for the rice didn't seem right, I had to simmer the rice for at least 10 minutes longer than the recipe called for. Also, cooking the rice in the water really watered down the recipe, if the rice were cooked in a combination of water and vegetable stock or water and white wine I think the rice would have been more flavorful.


Green Beans with Walnut Dressing

Ingredients-1 lb green beans
-2 tablespoons walnut oil
-1 tablespoon olive oil
-1 tablespoon white wine vinegar
-1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
-Black pepper

Cook the green beans in salted boiling water until tender (5-6 minutes)

Combine walnut oil, olive oil, white vinegar, mustard, black pepper in a small bowl and mix.

Drain green beans and combine with dressing.

This recipe came from the same cookbook as the pilaf recipe and was really tasty. However, the walnut oil was expensive and didn't add too much flavor to the dish, if it's something you have on hand it's great to use, otherwise I would leave it out and just add more mustard to the dressing.