I’m not going to pretend that this exotic sounding dish was inspired by a visit to an equally as exotic sounding location – in fact what prompted me to create it was many a visit to Wagamama when Mr H and I were studying for our accounting exams. It was my go-to dish back in the day (I thought it was healthy because it was made with brown rice), but it always seemed to leave me absolutely parched and I’d spend the whole afternoon drinking water like it was going out of fashion.

I had a look at the nutritional info for said favourite dish and it all started to make sense – not only did it contain 970 calories (which even though we don’t believe in counting calories here at D&H is a LOT and explains why I could never finish it) but it also has 4.4g of salt. To put that into perspective that’s 73% of an average adults RDA of salt (per the NHS) which is a bit too much for me to stomach – literally!

So I decided to make my own version, and luckily it’s not a very hard dish to make at all. You just need some rice, a couple of veggies (which you can chop and change if you fancy and use up any leftovers you might have lying around in the fridge) and a couple of spices/condiments for extra flavour. All in all it’s only 9 ingredients, and you can add in eggs, chicken, prawns, tofu or whatever you feel like if you fancy.

Also assuming you have some brown rice, sesame oil and tamari in your store cupboard already (which I would totally recommend) it will only cost you a couple of pounds to buy all the ingredients, so it’s a really cost-effective meal if you’re on a budget or you have a lot of people to feed. It’s also packed with nutrients thanks to all the veggies, and the brown rice should keep you full up for ages thanks to its slow release energy. I love making a double batch of this so I have some left over for lunch the next day – I don’t even heat it up as it’s really yummy cold too.

Serves 2

Ingredients

• 1 cup brown rice, uncooked
• 4 spring onions
• 10 chestnut mushrooms (about 250g)
• 2 cups (about 200g) mange tout
• 1 cup (about 160g) canned sweetcorn, drained
• 1 tablespoons sesame oil
• 1 tablespoon tamari (or soy sauce if not gluten free)
• 1 garlic clove
• 1/2 tsp fresh ginger
• 2 eggs (optional)

Place the rice in a saucepan of water and bring to the boil, then reduce to a medium heat and cook for a further 25 minutes. While the rice is cooking, wash all the veg then trim the spring onions and chop them into 1 inch lengths, finely slice the mushrooms and chop the mange tout also into lengths of about 1 inch.

Next, finely chop the garlic clove and fresh ginger and combine in a small bowl with the tamari and sesame oil. Pour this into a wok and heat on a medium heat for around a minute, then add in the spring onions, mushrooms, mange tout and sweetcorn. Stir fry on a medium heat for about five minutes (until the veggies start to soften) then stir in the rice. If you’re using eggs, now’s the time to push everything to one side of the wok and crack the eggs into the empty side, then keep stirring them as if you’re making scrambled eggs until they are cooked and finally stir them into the rest of the dish.

Love, Mrs H xx