[RECIPE IN SHOW NOTES] 

We’ve talked no-stir risottos before, but there’s a whole FAMILY of oven-baked rice dishes out there that do a great job of unchaining you from the stove and putting you back into where you need to be! This one is a sort of riff on all things summer salad, in rice form. Bit weird, but it kind of works. It makes use of short-grain rice here – the squat, stubby, starchier cousin of the rice family that’s great for stir-fries, rice balls and sushi or creamy dishes such as rice pudding and risotto. 

PS - Simon’s feeling SUPER SMUG here because he’s using olives from his own olive tree! You could add a bit of fried crispy chorizo to this if you wanted to but, well, I don’t. 

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Recipe

Serves 4

2 tbsp olive oil 

30g butter 

1 x 400g tin butter beans

2 medium red onions, peeled and finely diced

a few big handfuls of basil, leaves picked, stalks very finely chopped

sea salt and black pepper

a punnet of cherry tomatoes, halved

2 garlic cloves, peeled and finely sliced

280g short-grain rice

200g feta 

140g black olives

Heat the oven to 2OOC. Put the oil and butter in an ovenproof pan for which you have a lid and put it in the oven to heat up.

Drain the liquid from the butter bean can into a large measuring jug, then add boiling water to bring it up to 840ml. Pour this into a saucepan on a medium heat, and keep it hot.

Stir the onion, basil stalks and a good pinch of salt into the hot casserole, cover and return to the oven for 15 minutes, until the onions soften. Stir in the tomatoes, cover again and return to the oven for another 15 minutes, until they, too, soften and release some of their liquid; stir once halfway, to check how they’re getting on and to give them a little mash up to encourage those juices to flow. Stir in the garlic and return to the oven uncovered for three minutes.

Stir the rice into the pot, so it’s all well coated in the tomato mixture. Pour in the hot bean liquid, give everything a good stir and return to the oven uncovered for 20 minutes. By this point, the rice should have absorbed two-thirds of the liquid, so add a little more boiling water if there’s less than that left. Stir in the butter beans and return to the oven for 12 minutes, by which time the liquid should have all been absorbed and the rice should be cooked; it’s not meant to be entirely dry, so add some more boiling water if you prefer it wetter.

Take out of the oven, stir in the feta and olives, cover the pan with a clean cloth and leave to rest and settle for five minutes. Tear in most of the basil leaves, stir them through the rice, then spoon into warm bowls and serve with the remaining basil scattered on top.