I enjoy cooking and making my own lunch box for the lunch break at the office, making lunch box can be a real challenge as I want to keep the food appealing and as fresh as possible in a plastic box which has been carried in an overcrowded and overheated tube.

As I read a lot of articles on super-food, I gave a try to Turmeric, you might have heard about it as it is more an more common with hot drink… I used it for cooking the basmati rice and that is a great discovery as it colored the whole rice with a really nice yellow color, so bright for helping to go through the raining weather in London. On top of that, Tumeric has the value-added to be an antioxidant and anti-inflammatory, so there is no excuse to not using it.

For making sure that the dish contains all the vitamins and nutrients, lentils need to be added and then adding roasted sesame seeds and chia seeds complete the goodness of the dish. Lentils can be easily removed from the recipe if you don’t like it

• SERVE: 
• PREPARATION: 25 minutes
• COOK: 20 minutes
• DIFFICULTY: 

What do you need?

• 100 g of Basmati rice
• 50 g of Dupuy lentils or green lentils
• 3 carrots
• 2 parsnips or swede
• 100g of mushroom (white or chestnuts mushrooms) – this is optional
• 60 g of Russian Kale
• 1 red onion
• ½ to 1 teaspoon of Tumeric powder
• Handful of roasted sesame seeds
• Handful of chia seeds
• Handful of aromatic herbs
• Seasoning such as salt, pepper and a pinch of paprika
• 1 vegetable stock

How to make Tumeric basmati rice with carrots, parsnip, mushrooms and green lentils?

 Start by soaking the lentils for 1 hour before cooking them. This step is optional but it helps to reduce the cooking time of the lentils

• Wash carefully the Russian kale
• Peel and cut into square pieces both of carrots and parsnip
• Keep aside one carrot in square pieces (this is optional)

I like to cook lentils along with some pieces of carrots but that is purely personal taste

• Peel and chop the onion
• Steam for 10 minutes the parsnip/swede and carrots
• Simmer the basmati rice as it is indicated on the packaging and add the turmeric to the cooking water
• Simmer the soaked lentils with carrots in boiling water for 15 minutes with vegetable stock
• In a pan with one tablespoon of olive oil, heat at medium heat the red onion
• Then add the chopped Russian kale and stir fry it for a couple of minutes

 The Russian kale is cooked when the leaves look like spinach which means that the leaves are soft. If you prefer to keep the crunchy aspect of the Russian Kale, you just need to reduce the cooking time

• Wash carefully the mushrooms and chopped them
• Add the chopped mushrooms to the pan with the cooked kale
• Then add the steamed vegetables
• Then add the cooked rice, cooked lentils with carrots and add the seasoning along with fresh aromatic herbs
• Serve it straight away and sparkled roasted sesame seeds and chia seeds

 That is really easy to roast the sesame seeds, just add the sesame seeds in a pan and leave them a couple of minute on medium heat. Be careful, that needs constant attention, as it can easily burn

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